


Make Me Believe

by circ_bamboo



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:42:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pike, after the events of the <em>Narada</em>, must put himself back together before he can fall for McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Me Believe

**Link to art:** [Artings here!](http://ellipsisthgreat.livejournal.com/13514.html)  
**Link to mix:** [Music here!](http://angelcreations.livejournal.com/32267.html)

Christopher Pike's brain went from zero to maximum warp almost instantaneously, and he would have shot straight to a seated position except his legs didn't seem to want to work properly. He tried to breathe, resulting in some sort of gasping for air that felt like inhaling knives and razor blades. It was dark in the room he was in, although that weird sort of incomplete darkness common to spaceships. Something was stuck to his temples, and he fumbled a hand up to find the discs that doctors used to monitor brain activity. Wait—what happened to his hair?

Dragging in another painful breath, he raised his other hand to pull the discs off, and realized that there was something taped to his arm—something stuck _in_ his arm—and the monitors above his bed went wild. A moment later a doctor appeared: Dr. Leonard McCoy, one of the cadets, not set to graduate until later this year. Where was Dr. Boyce or, barring that, Dr. Puri?

Also, what the _fuck_ was he doing in Sickbay? The last thing he remembered was—

Was—

A white-hot flood of images rushed through his brain. Through it, he was dimly aware that Dr. McCoy was speaking, and then he felt the pressure of a hypospray against his upper arm, and then—nothing.

* * *

The second time Chris woke up, it was like swimming through murky water. He blinked, took slow, clear breaths, and finally broke the surface, the room around him—still Sickbay, in an isolation room—becoming clearer. An odd grating noise confused him until he turned his head slightly to the left and saw Jim Kirk, of all people, snoring in a chair.

"Kirk?" he said, voice barely above a whisper.

Nonetheless, Kirk heard him, and startled awake. "Captain Pike. You're awake. Let me go get Bones."

'Bones' was Jim's idiosyncratic nickname for Dr. McCoy, Chris knew, but was still fuzzy enough to keep wondering why he was in Sickbay and what Jim was doing there. Kirk was still a cadet; hadn't graduated either. And he couldn't remember why he himself would be on a ship anyway.

It only took about thirty seconds for Kirk to return. "He'll be here in five minutes or so. At least he got a few hours of sleep."

"What's going on?" Chris asked.

"He was sitting here—" Jim indicated the isolation room with a careless gesture. "—for a full 24 hours, until Nurse Chapel begged me to help kick him out."

"Oh," Chris said. "Why? And what happened?"

Jim paused and blinked. "Well, that answers that question. Just a moment, sir, and he'll be here."

McCoy appeared in much less than the advertised five minutes, which was good as Chris couldn't get any more information out of Kirk. He watched, feeling strangely detached, as McCoy performed a short exam, explaining carefully what he was doing and always keeping his hands where Chris could see them. Nice, and useful, but not necessary; Chris was about to tell him so, when McCoy sighed and sat down in the chair next to the bed. "Jim, scram," he said, and strangely enough, Jim did.

_Hm._

"Captain Pike," McCoy said, oddly hesitant. "I've got you on cyrprogian. It provokes temporary short-term memory loss. Can you tell me—what's the last thing you remember?"

Chris frowned. "Kirk was set to take the Kobayashi Maru for the third time. After that—nothing. When was that?"

"Almost four weeks ago," McCoy said.

"What?" That . . . didn't make sense. What on— _fuck_ , he did _not_ want a gap in his memory that big. He struggled to sit up, realized there was an IV in his arm—old-fashioned as it was. "McCoy, tell me _now_ ," he ordered, but the coughing fit marred the order.

"I could lower your dose of cyrprogian, and you'll remember yourself," McCoy said. "It won't be pleasant, and we don't have a ship's psychiatrist or even a run-of-the-mill therapist at the moment."

"Do it," Chris said, his jaw tightening. "Also, where the _fuck_ am I, Cadet?"

McCoy's own jaw tightened. "At the moment I am the acting CMO of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_. Jim Kirk is currently acting captain. You are in one of the isolation chambers on that ship, having been injured in the line of duty."

Oh, jesus fuck, what the hell _happened_? He didn't say anything out loud, but McCoy continued. "I will lower your dose of cyrpro, but I am profoundly uncomfortable with allowing you to go through this without proper support. I've had you in a medically-induced coma for the last two weeks due to your physical injuries, but I cannot allow your condition to deteriorate any more."

Chris had never heard McCoy speak so formally, every word bitten off precisely, despite the occasional twangy vowel. "Dr. McCoy," he said, feeling as though he were repeating himself for the twentieth time. "I understand that what happened was probably awful, and that you don't have high hopes for my sanity after the incident. But can you give me some idea of what I've forgotten so I don't lose my sanity _twice_?"

McCoy sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "A distress signal came in from Vulcan." In a few short sentences, he described the last few weeks.

Chris knew that McCoy was leaving out more than he told, but he was capable of filling some of it in himself. Some astronomically high percentage of the cadets dead, the majority of the Vulcans in the galaxy dead—and of course, the torture he'd undergone—he was surprised, in a distant way, that his hands were starting to shake, and then surprised at his surprise. "I think," he said carefully, "that perhaps you shouldn't lower the dose until we're back at Starfleet Medical."

It was cowardly of him, Chris knew, but McCoy's face relaxed. "It'll be another two weeks—sixteen days, actually. I've already contacted Dr. Boyce. He'll have everything set up for you when you get back."

"Okay," Chris said, his eyes starting to close. He didn't hear McCoy leave.

* * *

When he woke up the next time, he demanded more facts about his physical condition; McCoy explained as best he could about experimental neural grafts. The fact that Chris didn't care about McCoy's inability to say he'd walk again, let alone return to active duty, let him know that he was still highly drugged.

On the other hand—

"Wait, so the bug chewed on my _what_?" He looked down at his feet, lumps under the biobed blanket. He could feel them, sort of; that is, when McCoy or one of the other medical professionals poked at them, he knew there was someone poking at his feet. "Shouldn't I be paralyzed?" _Or dead?_

"You are," McCoy said. "Partially, at the moment. Primary issue was keeping your autonomic functions working, and they do—you can breathe, swallow, blink, et cetera, and your heart still beats. But nerves take a long time to regrow, even with grafts and a regen, and the fact that you have some sensation in your legs at all is a miracle."

"Either that or you're a damn fine surgeon."

McCoy shrugged. "Little of column A, little of column B."

Chris laughed as intended.

He still only managed to stay awake for an hour or so at a time, but at least he still had feet.

* * *

It got better. Sort of. He could stay awake for longer stretches, but that only let him see the number of haunted-looking people aboard the ship. Even though he was told that the _Aquino_ had come to give them much-needed supplies and relief crew, the _Enterprise_ crew all still looked worn and drawn thin. Many of them never seemed to sleep—no matter when he woke up, both Dr. McCoy and the _de facto_ head nurse, Christine Chapel, were both there. Kirk stopped by regularly, but even he was wearing down; the dark circles under his eyes looked like they might become permanent.

Chris didn't want to know how _he_ looked, and no one was foolish enough to offer him a mirror.

It was mostly boring, though, being hurt but not remembering it; being stuck in bed. At least he slept most of the time.

A week or so after he woke up from the medical coma, McCoy asked him to wiggle his toes.

"I can't," he said. He'd tried, when he woke up in the middle of the night.

"Yes, you can."

"No, I can't."

With a significant amount of effort and what Chris would call "threats" but McCoy called "encouragement," he did manage to wiggle his toes briefly, but the pain almost made him black out. When his vision returned, he said, "That hurt."

"Pain's good; means you're alive," McCoy said.

"What the hell kind of bullshit is _that_ ," Chris said, still hauling in breaths as fast as he could. "Some sort of Buddhist nonsense?"

"No, medical fact," McCoy retorted. "Can't feel pain if the nerves are dead."

"Also can't feel pain if the doctors are giving you sufficient levels of drugs," Chris said. Not that he wanted more drugs—his head was fuzzy enough as it was and any time he thought about it, he still felt guilty about leaving the ship in the hands of the cadets— _children_ —who were running the place. He closed his eyes and sighed.

"Captain Pike?" he heard McCoy ask.

"Go away, Dr. McCoy," he said, suddenly exhausted.

"All right," McCoy said, "but if you need anything. . . ."

He didn't say anything, and a moment later, he heard the door shut as McCoy's footsteps receded. It was strange, though—for a moment, there, McCoy had actually sounded, well, _nice_. And not Southern-manners nice, or _I'm actually going to beat you over the head but I'm pretending I'm not_ nice. More—

More _let's be nice to the broken captain_ nice.

Well, _fuck_.

* * *

He woke up one morning, maybe a couple days before they reached Earth, to hear McCoy and Kirk having an argument in the hallway outside his room.

"Jim, you have two choices at this moment. You can go to your quarters and not leave them for twelve full hours, or I can take you off duty for the next forty-eight."

"You can't do that!"

Both men were hissing, trying to be quiet, but Chris could clearly hear them. He sighed.

"Besides," Kirk said a moment later; his change in tone made Chris think he'd probably lost a staring contest. "My quarters suck."

Chris frowned. Kirk was acting captain; wasn't he using the captain's quarters?

He heard McCoy's sigh clearly. "Go use mine."

"You sure?"

"'Course I'm sure. Would I offer if I weren't sure?"

"Nah, probably not." A thwapping noise was probably Kirk clapping McCoy on the shoulder. "Thanks, Bones."

McCoy came in a moment later, probably to check on him.

"Why isn't he using the captain's quarters?" Chris asked by way of greeting.

"Oh, you heard that?" McCoy said, looking up. "Sorry."

"It's not like I ever got to use 'em."

"What? Oh, the quarters." McCoy sighed. "He won't. And, to be fair, I'm not entirely comfortable using the CMO's quarters, but I have to be near Sickbay."

"Mmm," Chris said. "Phil wouldn't mind."

McCoy looked at him oddly. "Dr. Puri was the CMO."

Whose first name was Arjun. "Oh, right." _Huh._ "Do you happen to know why it wasn't Dr. Boyce?" He probably knew but that was in the part of his memories that were blocked.

"He was in surgery, apparently."

"Lucky him." Chris sighed. "Next time I'll drag him out of surgery myself." He realized, the minute he said it, that there was almost no chance that there _would_ be a next time. Closing his eyes, he sighed, and thought as hard as he could about anything but that.

McCoy didn't say anything, just finished checking the biobed's readout and left.

* * *

Phil—Dr. Boyce—apparently pulled every string he'd ever had, and got Chris transferred straight to an isolation room in Starfleet Medical, without anyone interfering or trying to ask him stupid questions. After the nurse checked him over, Phil threw everyone else out of the room and sat in the chair. "How are you?" he asked.

"Tired," Chris said.

"Yeah, I figured," Phil said. "Jesus, Chris—I don't even know where to start."

"I know," Chris said. "Neither do I." He yawned. "I guess with getting rid of the memory-blocker."

"Yeah," Phil said. "You've been on it long enough to get resistant. I'm surprised you aren't remembering yet, or at least having nightmares."

He had been, actually, having nightmares, but even injured and drugged, he was an excellent liar. "Lucky me."

Phil's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything. "We'll lower the dose this evening. In the meantime, you're about to fall asleep."

"Yeah," he said, blinking long and slow.

Phil leaned over and squeezed his hand, and then leaned in farther, kissing him on the forehead. "That's from Alicia," he said, naming his wife.

Chris tried not to flinch, but didn't manage.

Phil's eyes narrowed again, but he didn't ask any questions, just said, "She'll be by later, if that's okay."

Chris nodded, and closed his eyes.

* * *

The next time he woke up, McCoy was standing at the foot of his bed, making notes on a PADD with a stylus. "You're awake," he said.

An image of McCoy rushing at him as Jim Kirk dragged him off the transporter platform, helping him onto a gurney, surfaced, and Chris started shaking, a fine tremor in his hands and chest. "Yes," he managed, after a moment or two.

McCoy looked at him critically, and said, "You're remembering."

"Uh-huh," he said.

* * *

He didn't like to think about the next twenty-four hours.

* * *

Phil brought in Dr. Elizabeth Dehner a day or so after he remembered; introduced her as the best of Starfleet's psych division. She smiled at him, tall and blonde and _oh_ so young.

"Are you sure she's old enough for this?" Chris asked him after she'd left.

"Yes," Phil said.

* * *

It was sausage, of all things. The symbolism wasn't lost on him.

He'd lost so much weight over the last few weeks of forced inactivity and lack of appetite and drugs with strange side effects that none of the doctors particularly cared what he ate as long as he ate it. So just after he met Elizabeth "call me Liz" Dehner, he asked for a wonderfully cholesterol-laden breakfast to start his day: scrambled eggs, toast, and the aforementioned sausage.

One of the orderlies brought it to him, and he dove in, cutting a sausage link in half and eating it.

Except when he chewed, he—

There was something about the texture and the odd squeak that sausage always made, that—

And suddenly, he wasn't in an isolation room at Starfleet Medical; he was on a future-Romulan mining ship. He wasn't feeding himself; he was being force-fed a fucking _bug_ —

And a moment later, the blessed relief of unconsciousness.

"That," Liz said later, completely unnecessarily because he'd _already figured it out_ , "was a flashback."

He'd served thirty years in active duty; there was no way he could have avoided _everything_ that would have given him symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Before this, though, the drugs and occasional counseling session had largely worked, and he'd gone on his merry way, with only a few nightmares to keep him awake.

He said as much to Liz, who shrugged. "Four hundred years of vaguely-modern medicine—much more for other species—and we still don't know exactly how the brain works."

"That's not an answer," he said.

"I don't know what to say, then," she said, spreading her hands. "Two people will go through roughly the same situation and one will come away with PTSD and the other won't. We can predict that there are situations with higher likelihood of permanent changes to brain chemistry—prolonged torture is one of them—but we don't _know_." She paused, and added, "I wish we did."

"Me too," Chris said bitterly. "Now what?"

"Now we give you tools to manage it."

* * *

There was something horribly cruel about being forced to start psychotherapy and true physical therapy at the same time, but it wasn't as if he had much of a choice. He suffered through the initial testing, and desperately tried not to think about the numbers: how much mobility he'd lost, how much dexterity he'd lost, and how much it was possible to expect him to gain back.

(Mostly they didn't know, thanks to McCoy's experimental techniques. It didn't make it easier.)

What was also uncomfortable was the number of people who wanted to visit him and, he didn't know, _commiserate_ or something. Or they expected him to share his _feelings_ with them. For fuck's sake, he'd been _tortured_. He didn't need any more of that shit.

Even when it was people he liked, or at least was related to.

"Is he awake?"

 _He is now_ , Chris thought crankily. Whoever had said that wasn't exactly quiet. And now that his brain was starting to come back online, he recognized the voice as Admiral Joshua Pike—his father. _Of course._

Okay, to be fair, he did want to see his parents, but he wished he'd had some warning. He vaguely remembered that they'd been vacationing on Casperia Prime recently, but they had apparently returned.

A nurse poked his head into the room, and said, "Ah, Captain Pike? You have visitors. Are you up for them, sir?"

"My parents, right?" Chris said, struggling to sit up somewhat.

The nurse hurried over to his side and pushed the button to prop the head of the bed up partway. "I'm not sure, sir," he said. "I could ask?"

"Never mind," Chris said. "Just send them in."

"Yes, sir." The nurse left, and a minute later, in came Admiral Joshua Pike and Dr. Wilhelmina (Mina) Pike, both retired.

"Oh, Chris," his mother said, and came to the side of the bed, clasping one of her hands in his. "You're alive."

"I am," he said. He had no idea what to say to that; he had the horrible suspicion that his mother was about to start crying, and he had no idea what to do about that, either.

"Chris," his father said; tall, imposing, square-jawed, and white-haired, he looked nothing like his son. He shuffled, visibly uncomfortable, by the door. _That makes two of us_ , Chris thought. "We were, ah. Worried. Came back early."

"Yeah," Chris said. "Um. Thanks? I'm glad you were safe. Where were you?"

"We were on Andoria, on the way back from Casperia Prime," Mina said. "Your father called in about every marker he had to get us a ride back to Earth as soon as possible."

"How long did it take the news to reach Andoria?" he asked, flailing for a conversational topic.

His parents actually let him redirect the conversation away from him, his injuries, and everything else for a good ten minutes, until his father finally asked point-blank, "Are you going to walk again?"

Chris paused and blinked. "I don't know," he said evenly, after a good long pause in which he and his father had a staring contest, and his mother said nothing. "I've got the best doctors in the Federation staring at scans of my head and spine on a regular basis. They've called in Dr. Poole-April to consult, even, as well as the Denobulans and Andorians. I think they'd be asking the Vulcans except they have their own problems to deal with."

He took a deep breath, and continued. "Phil won't blow smoke up my ass, and he hasn't told me either way. They—Phil, Dr. McCoy who actually did the surgery, the Surgeon General—all say that it's too soon to tell."

"It doesn't matter," Mina said, glaring at Josh. "Even if you can't, I'm sure there's stuff that you can do on Earth, with Starfleet and the Federation."

"Yes," Josh said, after she elbowed him in the side.

"I'm sure there is," Chris said. "I haven't made any plans. It's still, as I mentioned a minute ago, too soon to tell." He dug his index fingernail into the nail bed of his thumb; it hurt, but that was the point. He could concentrate on the small, sharp pain, rather than on— _nope not gonna think about it_.

After another silent conversation with Mina, elbows and eyebrows flying, Josh Pike said, remarkably reluctantly, "I guess they're going to make you an admiral?"

"What?" Chris said without thinking.

"Oh, that's a good way to tell him," Mina said, acid in her tone. "Chris, for your heroism in the Battle for Vulcan, Starfleet is going to promote you to admiral."

"My . . ." He trailed off. _Heroism? You mean getting caught in a trap so obvious that I had no way of avoiding it, and getting tortured, and having to be rescued like a damsel in distress by a fucking cadet who was suspended for cheating at the time?_ He closed his eyes. "Wow. Kicking me upstairs already."

"No, that can't be it," Mina said.

Chris sighed. "No, that's exactly it." _If I'd died, then I'd be a martyr like George Kirk, and a hero, but I survived, and I'm broken, which means they have no fucking clue what to do with me and fuckit—_ He was starting to shake. "Could you come back later?" he asked as politely as he could—they were still his _parents_ , after all.

His father frowned, but as his mother was not possessed of the sensitivity of a rock, she elbowed Josh in the side again and hustled him out of the room without more than a perfunctory kiss on Chris's cheek.

Chris opaqued the windows, locked the door (ineffective, as any medical personnel could come in, but symbolic), and squeezed his eyes shut.

Of course, he didn't actually get any peace, as only a few breaths later (he'd lost all ability to estimate actual time), the doors swooshed open, and he heard a quiet, "Captain Pike?"

 _Haven't you heard: it's going to be 'admiral'?_ But he didn't say it; the words were stuck in his throat. Besides, the questioner was Dr. McCoy, and he owed the man a little more than yelling at him to _get the fuck out of my room_.

"I can help," McCoy said, still quietly.

Chris nodded once, stiffly.

"Can you open your eyes?"

Chris shook his head. If he did, he'd . . . _nope not gonna think about it no no no_

"Okay. I'm going to touch your right arm, just below your shoulder, just long enough to give you a hypospray. That's all. Nothing else."

He nodded, and felt the cool touch and hiss of the hypo, just as McCoy had said.

"That should kick in in about a minute. You might fall asleep. Meanwhile, I'll make everyone go away for a few hours, okay?"

Chris nodded. A few soft footfalls and another whoosh indicated that McCoy left, but it took what felt like forever for the drug to kick in.

He didn't even remember relaxing, just falling asleep, like the warp core in his brain had abruptly been ejected and inertia had suddenly stopped working. Waking up a couple hours later, he recognized the peculiar floating feeling of still being drugged, and let his thoughts drift.

If Chris hadn't been his patient for the last few weeks, he'd have had no idea that McCoy was capable of, well, being nice. He'd recruited the man because he was a genius, and because even if he was an abrasive asshole, he could either sit in a lab all day and not deal with people, or he could do trauma-related medicine, where it didn't matter how nice one was, just how _fast_. (Phil would probably have his head for making that oversimplification, but oh well.)

Then again, he'd primarily seen McCoy either in class, where he would excoriate one of his less-gifted classmates; around Jim Kirk, who brought out the best _and_ worst in people; or drunk. It was no wonder he'd thought McCoy was always sharp-tongued.

It wasn't like Chris couldn't respect having a low tolerance for fools, anyway.

A chime sounded at the door, and Chris looked up, still too drugged to startle. "Computer, who is it?"

"Dr. Philip J. Boyce is at the door."

"Ah. Let him in." Not that Phil couldn't just have come in, but it was polite to have the illusion of choice in the matter.

Phil came in with the look that usually meant he wanted to swoop in with a tricorder and fix everything, but only sat next to the bed. "I hear your parents stopped by."

"Yeah," Chris said. "Apparently some asshole in the admiralty thought that my dad would be the best person to welcome me to their ranks."

"Well, fuck. Could have asked practically anyone who knows either of you; they'd have told them where to shove that idea." Phil paused, shifted in his chair. "Mina came to talk to me."

The elder Pikes, of course, knew Phil fairly well, for various reasons, so it wasn't entirely surprising. "Oh?"

"She's worried about you."

"Well, yeah." Chris shrugged. "I almost died, or something."

"You're still pretty drugged up, aren't you?"

"Yep."

Phil leaned forward. "Then I can say this: Chris, at some point, you're going to fall apart. For real, and no, the first few hours when you were remembering don't count."

Vaguely, under the haze, Chris could feel anger trying to build, but it wouldn't coalesce. "Okay," he said, "but not in front of my fucking _father_."

"All right, but I suspect you've got such a long list of 'not-in-front-ofs' that you're trying to hold it off by sheer force of will. Not in front of any of your visitors, I suppose. Definitely not in front of Jim Kirk or anyone ranked below captain, because that would undermine your authority."

"Phil," Chris said, a warning.

"You need the physical and emotional catharsis of crying," Phil said bluntly. "It would be easier on you if someone else were around to help you pick up the pieces. You also need to grieve, but you've been extremely successful at not thinking about what happened so far. I know you've only been off the cyrpro for a few days now, but you can't put it off forever."

"Go fuck yourself, Phil," Chris said. It was getting a little bit easier to find the heat of anger, but it still wasn't quite working.

"Yeah, I love you too, Chris. It doesn't have to be me. I won't be offended if you decide to cry all over Liz instead; she's better trained at this sort of thing than I am."

"Phil. Go. The fuck. Away."

Phil stood. "I've said what I needed to say. Alicia says hi. Groucho says hi." Groucho was their oversized chocolate-lab mix—possibly mixed with a Newfoundland, or else a bear.

He hated it when he was mad at Phil but was forced to be polite to the man for the sake of his wife, who certainly didn't deserve any ire. "She can stop by if she likes." In other words, Phil himself wasn't currently welcome.

"I'll tell her that." _Message received._ With that, he left, and Chris was alone, with his drugged thoughts.

Well, not for long. Dr. McCoy appeared a moment or two later. "Everything all right in here?"

Chris sighed. "Yeah. My best friend is an asshole, that's all."

McCoy snorted. "Don't I know that feeling. You going to be up to your session with the PT at 1600?"

"What time is it now?"

"Just past 1400."

Chris sighed. "Yeah, sure."

* * *

McCoy was there again—probably not coincidentally—when Chris got out of PT. "How'd that go for you?" he asked.

"There are no words sufficient to explain how much I hate physical therapists," Chris replied. He was too tired to keep much heat in his tone, though.

"I've heard that before. Ah, a JAG officer showed up to visit you while you were in with the PTs—Commander Alicia Cortez?"

"Yeah, not unexpected."

McCoy probably thought that he was holding a politely interested look, but he transparently wanted to know who she was and why she was showing up to talk to him.

"She's married to Phil," Chris said.

"Oh," McCoy said. "Huh."

Chris smiled half-heartedly. "Dr. McCoy, how long have you worked with Dr. Boyce?"

"Couple years now."

"Talk to him much?"

"Not really," McCoy said. "Only about work. I knew he was married because he wears a wedding band when he's not in surgery, but . . ."

"You know those mornings when he shows up whistling?"

"He shows up whistling every morning," McCoy said. "It's one of his most annoying qualities. Meaning no disrespect, of course."

"Well, Alicia Cortez, to whom he happens to be married and has been for the last thirty years, is the reason why. Chew on _that_ for a while."

"Rather not, thanks," McCoy said, and grimaced.

* * *

Captain Number One and Commander Caitlin Barry were the next to show up for a visit; or at least they were the next to get through Phil and Liz's stringent screening process. Between Phil, Alicia, McCoy, and Kirk's infrequent visits, Chris never quite felt like he was left alone, but he rarely saw anyone else. One and Cait's visit, though, was welcome; he and his XO had settled into a comfortable friendship over the last ten years or so, since their romantic relationship had ended.

One of the things he liked the most about One was that she was so unflappable; she came into his hospital room, greeted him, and sat down, serene as always. One of the things he _used_ to like about Cait, the _Yorktown_ 's chief engineer, was that there was rarely any guessing with her; she found it very difficult to hide strong emotion. So he probably should have expected the look on her face when she saw him.

Everyone else, including his parents, hadn't commented on the changes he knew must have happened—the shorn head only the most obvious, although his hair was a centimeter long or so at that point. He'd caught glimpses of himself in the mirror in the bathroom a time or two, but he hadn't actually _looked_. He knew he was thinner, that his skin was pale in ways he generally wasn't when planet-side, and that he _felt_ tired all the time, but he hadn't wanted to confirm.

"That bad, huh?" he said to Cait, trying to smile.

She shook her head, but the lie was obvious.

The two women managed to stay for a half hour or so; by the end of that time, Chris could feel the strain. After they left, he actually did the unthinkable and called the nurse to administer a dose of pain meds.

* * *

He managed to stave off Phil's prescribed crying fit for a good week. Unfortunately, what set it off wasn't anything he might have expected, such as a really bad day in terms of pain, or his father being a jerk, or more reminders that the _Enterprise_ would no longer be his.

Oh, no; it was because Phil had brought his academy ring back to him and it slipped off his finger.

Because he couldn't fucking eat half the time without panicking.

When it was over, he thought he should be more embarrassed that his psychiatrist was leaning about a meter over the side of his bed so he could cry on her shoulder, but he was just too exhausted to care.

* * *

Life got a little better after that. Well, no—it actually got a hell of a lot more difficult, as it was harder not to cry again after that happened and Starfleet captains—or admirals—don't cry. At least not in public. However, the nightmares got marginally less horrific, and Phil and Liz lowered his dosage of whatever it was they had him on to make him sleep at night.

The PTs and OTs determined that he was physically in a condition not to be in the hospital all the time, provided he had a caregiver. They offered to assign him a yeoman to do things like reach high shelves and help him in the bathroom.

The catch, of course, was that the caregiver/yeoman had to be around him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Chris declined. The therapists rescinded their offer until he could maneuver himself in and out of the bathroom.

Of course, now that he had a goal, he worked harder at his exercises. He wondered if perhaps that had been their goal all along. They were actually mentioning the 'w'-word (walk) around him. He pretended not to hear, but _oh_ , it sounded good.

* * *

A couple weeks later, Phil came into Chris's room and locked the door behind him. "Chris," he said, dropping into the bedside chair, "I made them let me tell you this time."

"Tell me what?" Chris asked, as he set his padd aside.

"They're giving the _Enterprise_ to Jim Kirk."

"They're _what_?"

"You heard me correctly."

"I don't—" Chris stopped, closed his mouth. He tried again. "What?"

"I think this was a decision almost entirely made by the PR department, yes, but they'll be keeping Kirk's quasi-field promotion to captain and giving him the flagship after she's been rebuilt."

"Oh, God," Chris said. That was—he couldn't even wrap his brain around it, and he wasn't particularly drugged at the moment.

Phil gave him a sympathetic look. "Chris, you know you have to be happy for him when he shows up."

Chris closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "I know," he said. "Damnit, Phil, I knew she wasn't going to be mine after this, but—Kirk?" Saying it out loud—that the _Enterprise_ wasn't _his_ anymore—drove a knife into his chest, but he ignored that particular pain. Time enough to deal with it later.

"You recruited him to do pretty much what he just did," Phil said.

"I didn't recruit him to _cheat_ ," Chris said, nettled. "And who the _hell_ gives the _flagship_ to a twenty-five-year-old cadet who was on probation and hasn't even properly graduated?"

"I don't understand it either, but it's going to happen. There will be a ceremony shortly, as soon as they can put it together, and Admiral Pike will have to transfer command to Captain Kirk."

"Oh, God," he said again. "Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome. Chris, you know that—"

"—Kirk's going to stop by and ask for my blessing, yes," Chris said, interrupting. "And I'm going to give it to him."

Phil nodded. "Good."

* * *

Jim Kirk showed up a few hours later, at around 2000. Chris had been distracting himself by reading a book on a padd, and bookmarked his place before setting it aside. "Jim," he said.

"Ah, Captain Pike," Jim said, and made a face. "I mean—"

"It's still 'Captain,'" Chris said. "The promotion hasn't gone through yet. How are you doing?"

"Fine, sir," he said. "I, ah—I wanted to talk to you." He was wearing command gold, but there were no stripes at all on his sleeves.

"About the fact that you'll be commanding the _Enterprise_ when she goes out?" Nope, it still hurt.

"Um, yes, that." Jim tapped a quick rhythm on his leg. "I mean, I'm sure I wasn't your first choice—at least not right now, although I like to think that you might have been happy to see me take over the _Enterprise_ from you someday—but if you—" He stood up straight, stilled his hands, and looked directly at Chris. "I'd like your blessing, sir. If you can give it."

Somehow, despite all the noise in his head, Chris managed to smile at Jim and say, "Of course I can give it, Jim, and of course you have it."

Jim's smile was as bright as he'd ever seen it.

* * *

The ceremony was miserable. The admiral's dress uniform was itchy; they insisted that a yeoman push his wheelchair, even though he could push it himself _and_ it was self-powered; there were too many damn people in the room; and he had the horrible suspicion that all of those people were staring at him. Phil reassured him later that they were not, but Chris didn't believe him.

Jim and his crew looked happy, though. Shiny, the lot of them.

* * *

"Well, Chris," Liz said, sitting in her usual chair. "Let's talk about the ceremony yesterday."

"Let's not," he said.

"All right," she said. "We can talk about something else instead."

"Anything," he said, realizing as the word came out of his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say.

"Anything?" How someone who looked about twelve and angelic could be as devious as she was, he had no idea.

"No, not _anything_ ," he said, "but anything within reason pertaining to treatment."

"How's your sex life?" she asked, somehow without turning red.

He did, though. "Nonexistent. As you might guess." He gestured at the hospital room.

"What was it like six months ago?" she asked, still actually looking at him.

He did like that she always gave a definite time frame, rather than saying something like, 'What was it like before you were tortured by a crazy future Romulan?' Not that she knew all the details, but still. "Existent." He'd propped himself up in the bed as he always did for counseling appointments, but found himself staring at the ceiling instead of at Liz. "What does this have to do with—anything?"

"Sex has everything to do with anything," she said, which wasn't an answer at all. "I'm going to need a little more than that, no matter how much it makes you uncomfortable."

"Or I could discuss this whole subject with Phil," he suggested.

Liz smiled and finally looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yeah, I suggested that, and he laughed at me and said, 'Oh, no, that's your job.'"

"Of course he did," Chris said, rolling his eyes. "Ask me short, concrete questions, and I'll see about not stroking out from embarrassment at saying this shit out loud."

"Okay," she said. "You're only four or so months out, so this is really a baseline more than anything else. Using six months ago as a standard reference point, how many mornings in a typical week would you wake up with an erection?"

The questions only got more embarrassing as she went on, and they got worse when she veered from sex to relationships. "I don't think everyone's cut out for long-term relationships," he found himself saying.

"You mean you don't think you are," she said, and he nodded. "I don't think that's true. You've maintained more than one long-term relationship in your life."

"For a year or so at a time, sure," he said. "And then it ends, and well . . ." He spread his hands. "I've been told multiple times that I'm married to the 'Fleet, and that's working out just fine for me."

"Is it?"

"Yes," he said, and realized too late that it sounded defensive. _Damn_. "Look, I'd like to get more regular sex as much as anyone, but it's just not—" He stopped. There wasn't an end to that sentence.

"Not what?"

 _I hate therapists_ , he thought, and shook his head.

"Okay," she said. "Tell me about your last relationship that lasted more than a couple months."

Chris shrugged. He could do that. "She was my XO. I'd had a couple previous relationships fail due to being what might be euphemistically termed 'long-distance,' so being on the same ship should have helped. Except it didn't."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. We just—we tried, and it didn't really gel, somehow. It felt like we were speaking different languages, and though we both tried, at least somewhat, to translate, it got to a point where we were both aware something was missing and we couldn't find it. Whatever it was. On paper we were pretty compatible, but . . ." He spread his hands. "Look, all things considered, it's not worth it."

"No?"

"No. Why are you asking these questions?"

It was Liz's turn to shrug. "You seem pretty well convinced that you shouldn't be in a relationship, but you haven't said whether you _want_ to."

Chris sighed. "Um, Liz, I don't know if it's escaped your notice, but I'm _crazy_ and in a _wheelchair_."

"Stop it," she said, tone mild.

Yeah, he knew he should stop it. They'd had the 'crazy' discussion before, and he was smart enough to know the contents of the 'being in a wheelchair doesn't change much of anything' discussion. He sighed again. "Yes. Sure. Why not. Everyone wants to fall in love and believe that it will last forever, or at least a good long time. It's a rush. It's also a giant gaping hole of vulnerability, and for fuck's sake, I've got enough of those right now. So forgive me for wanting to protect myself until, I don't know, the idea of someone coming down my throat doesn't send me into waves of panic." He deliberately went for the crudest image he could find, even though he knew from experience that she wouldn't even blink.

"Is it important to you, to be able to perform oral sex on a partner with a penis?" she asked, still completely unruffled.

"Oh, god," he said, and buried his face in his hands.

* * *

Chris was absently filling in a crossword puzzle on a padd, an off-duty Phil sprawled with his own padd in the bedside chair, when a chime sounded at the door; it was Dr. McCoy. Chris had seen him a few times since the relief ceremony, but McCoy had largely been absent from Starfleet Medical as he was presumably overseeing the stocking of the _Enterprise_ 's Sickbay.

"Dr. McCoy," Chris said. "How can I help you?" The greeting was maybe overly formal, but, well, couldn't do anything about that now.

"Ah, Admiral Pike," McCoy said. "And Dr. Boyce. If you're busy—"

Phil snorted and shifted to sit up properly. "It's not like you can come back later, McCoy. Don't you ship out bright and early tomorrow morning?"

"Well, yes," McCoy said, and sidled a half-step farther into the room.

"We'll both be there," Chris said, indicating himself and Phil.

"Will you?" McCoy said.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Chris said, and smiled.

McCoy smiled back, and Chris would have been willing to swear on a copy of the Federation Constitution that he'd seen McCoy smile before, but it really didn't feel like it. Or maybe the smile was just more genuine this time.

Either way, he felt a spark in his chest, warming just behind his sternum.

"Well, anyway," McCoy said, with a cough. "If you're going to be at the launch tomorrow, I won't bother saying goodbye today, or reminding Jim that he should." He coughed again. "Dr. Boyce, if you have any last minute advice?"

"Oh, I'm sure you don't need any more," Phil drawled. "It's going to take you a few years to break in your captain properly, but after that, everything will go more smoothly."

"I resemble that remark," Chris said, and they all laughed.

"Well," Phil said, after McCoy left, citing the need to count vials of serum or something. "That was interesting."

"Was it?" Chris asked.

"He was clearly here to see _you_."

Chris shrugged. "It's my room. He's my doctor."

"No, he's not," Phil said. "He signed off on that the minute you got back to Earth. If he treats you, which I know he does occasionally, it's because he's on rounds. Which, by the way, he requested over in the ICU. Specifically. Even though he should be in the ER."

"Huh," Chris said. "Well, still. He's got a vested interest in my health."

"Is that what it is?" Phil asked. "And besides, that wasn't the _only_ interesting part."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." Phil raised an eyebrow and quirked a smile. "Haven't seen _you_ react like that since Number One. Then again, you always did go for sarcastic brunettes."

Chris frowned. There had been, what, three brunettes out of the last ten people he slept with? And even though it was a plurality, he wouldn't have called any of them 'sarcastic.' Mouthy, maybe, but . . . Then his brain clicked back on track and he said, "What? Oh, no no no."

"No?"

"No," Chris said, more firmly this time.

Phil raised an eyebrow again.

Goddamnit, he hated when he did that. "No," he repeated again, and sighed. "Yeah, he's attractive, I guess—hell, it's impossible to miss that part—but no. Besides, wouldn't that be Florence Nightingale syndrome, or something? No, wait, the opposite."

"Transference," Phil said. "The word you're looking for is 'transference.' It's only transference, though, if you are, well, transferring emotions."

Chris stared at Phil for a moment. "No," he said. "Transient lust isn't an emotion."

"Well, it's something to think about."

 _No, it's not_ , Chris thought, but tried to make a face indicating that he'd consider it.

Phil stood. "Well, I'm out. Alicia's done with court at 1600."

"Say hi for me," Chris said.

"Of course."

"And really, sarcastic brunettes?"

"It's a pattern, Chris," Phil said, and left.

Chris stared at the industrial-strength ceiling tiles and frowned. _A pattern?_ Really?

It probably didn't say that much about him that he actually _couldn't_ remember everyone he'd slept with, but he could remember the longer-term ones: Number One, Lengyel, Rafael, Janeese.

Brunette, brunette, brunette, and, well, originally brunette.

Drily sarcastic, sarcastic (albeit in a gentle way), perhaps not sarcastic but capable of getting in a good zinger or two, and, well, yeah, okay, she'd been sarcastic, too. Especially when she was breaking up with him.

Hell, if he wanted to throw Phil in there, although it wasn't quite the same thing, he could add another.

Well, okay, maybe it was a pattern, but—Not McCoy. For such a long list of reasons, including: ethics, fraternization regulations, logistics, a twenty-year age gap, and the fact that he _hated_ it when Phil was right about things like this.

Also, he could have sworn that McCoy and Kirk were fucking.

(And who wouldn't want to fuck Kirk? Smart-assed golden boy; certainly got enough practice, if campus rumors were correct. Chris had thought about it idly once or twice, but his tastes really didn't run to cadets. The biggest age gap _downward_ he'd ever had, even in one-night stands, was seven or eight years. Well, unless you counted Gyxa, but his planet didn't use Standard years.)

Besides—he frowned down at his legs below the hospital blanket and flexed his toes, just because he could—it wasn't as if he were in the market for fucking _anyone_ , gorgeous and brilliant or not. Rolling over on his side, carefully, using his hands to accomplish what his legs couldn't quite, he closed his eyes and determinedly thought of nothing at all.

* * *

There were a ridiculous number of reporters at the send-off for the _Enterprise_. Chris supposed he should have expected them, but they were still a surprise. He shifted in his chair, fortunately the hovering one this time, stuffed into the dress uniform again, and looked up at Phil.

Who looked surprisingly relaxed in his own dress uniform, but he, of course, was only a captain, and Chris had liked the captain's dress uniform just fine.

The new _Enterprise_ command crew entered, and somebody said something, but Chris tuned him out almost immediately. He looked at the seven and thought, _Were we ever that young?_

He didn't realize he'd said it out loud until Phil leaned down and murmured, "No, we were at least old enough to drink and form contracts when we went out there."

Chris smiled. To be fair, they all looked young and shiny in their starched dress uniforms, not just the barely-eighteen Chekov. Kirk had plastered an eager look on his face that would probably make him laugh if he looked at him too long. Dr. McCoy was very much trying not to look bored, and when on Earth had that happened, that Chris could tell the difference between various looks on the doctor's face?

He tried not to think about it too hard; just shook everyone's hand and watched the viewscreen as the _Enterprise_ took off on her first official mission.

Without him.

It was probably a good thing that Phil and Alicia dragged him out for dinner afterward.

* * *

Starfleet Maintenance went to his apartment, on the third floor of Glenn Hall, and installed a whole bunch of extra bars and widened a couple of doors before the therapists would let him call it home again. He finally got to move in a few days after the _Enterprise_ left, and it was such a relief.

Chris puttered around his apartment, all by himself, after he shooed the yeomen and Phil and his PT out, and was happy to discover that he actually could, in his current state of mobility, live alone. It was possibly the best feeling he'd had all week. Or maybe longer than that. He didn't think about it too hard.

He didn't think it was particularly strange that he didn't sleep the first night he was allowed back into his apartment. He'd been used to the hermetically-sealed environment of the hospital, and the soundproofing in the Starfleet-issued apartments left something to be desired. Even though he still tired easily, after he hoisted himself out of the wheelchair and into bed, he couldn't sleep.

Of course, the first thing that kept him awake was that he just couldn't remember if he'd locked the door to the apartment, so he hauled himself back into the damn chair and checked manually. He also checked to see if the windows in the living room were all set to 100% opacity, and that they were locked as well.

They were; everything was locked, but he grabbed a padd that would control the apartment's settings and took it to bed with him. From there, he sighed and pushed as well as he could to get his bed to the corner. Maintenance had carefully moved his bed so that he could maneuver the wheelchair around three sides of it, but it was just in the _wrong_ place.

Moving it took about a half hour, with lots of stops, but it was worth it. Well, sort of. He got back into bed, bundled himself into a blanket, put a pillow on the open side of the bed, and backed against the wall. Reaching an arm out, he grabbed the padd, rechecked the locks, locked the door to his actual bedroom, turned the lights all off, turned one back on, set the alarms to flash the lights as well as play a loud noise, and—

—finally figured out that wasn't quite normal. _Well, shit._ He didn't want to take the sleeping pills, but he'd always been able to skip a night of sleep here or there, so he turned the lights up a bit more and retrieved another padd that had log reports on it.

By the time morning rolled around, his chest ached, his eyes burned, and his hands were shaking. He'd listened to two or three neighbors go about their usual morning routines due to the fact that he absolutely couldn't _not_ listen, although he didn't need to know what his downstairs neighbor sounded like during morning sex, or that the commander next door insisted on gargling for about five minutes straight. He sat under the spray of hot water for a while and that fixed some of the aching and burning. Coffee (half a cup) helped, too, and he made it to his 1000 physical-therapy appointment with a few minutes to spare.

Chris fell asleep while the massage therapist worked on his lower back but not deeply, and woke up maybe ten minutes later, alone in the room, with the strange ambient music just barely on the edge of his hearing. He felt like his entire body was made of lead, and still wasn't sure he was breathing to the full depth of his lungs, but he could still go on.

Lunch was uneventful; whoever'd picked it up for him managed to stick to the short list of pre-approved food with no variations. What the med center politely termed 'occupational therapy' that had nothing to do with his actual occupation (seriously, who cared that his handwriting was even more illegible than before? no one wrote anything anymore) started at 1400 and lasted until his hands started cramping.

(Goddamnit, he was an admiral now; he wasn't going to have to go diving under engineering panels and rewiring things anymore. Not that he did a ton of that before, but still.)

Another massage, and they sent him off to the pool to sit around and not swim laps until dinner. He powered through dinner, complained to Liz about the occupational therapy for half an hour while she suggested increasingly-impractical things he may wish to have his manual dexterity returned for (needlepoint, really?), and stared blankly at the vidscreen while an old holovid played.

When 0000 came around, he wheeled himself around the apartment, locked and secured everything (only twice), wrapped himself in blankets again, huddled against the wall, and—

—settled in for another night of alternately staring at the ceiling and reading increasingly-more-ludicrous things to distract himself. When he finished _Anne of Green Gables_ at around 0630, he finally gave up, turned the lights all the way on, and went to take another shower.

Phil and Alicia were meeting him for breakfast, and that lasted about fifteen seconds before Phil asked, "How long since you last slept? Goddamnit, I should have checked on you yesterday, but you spent all day in therapy. Come on."

Alicia muttered something under her breath in Spanish that Chris probably could have understood if his brain weren't underwater, and tossed the portable parts of breakfast into a bag she pulled out of her briefcase.

"Stupid," Phil was saying under his breath, and Chris didn't know which one of them he meant. Possibly both?

A blink or two later and they were standing in front of Phil and Alicia's house; a couple minutes after that, Chris was staring at their king-sized bed with no knowledge of how he got there. "Wait, this is your bed," he said, protesting fuzzily.

"I'm well aware of that," Phil said, holding his hands out so Chris could grab them and pull himself out of the chair. When it turned out he didn't quite have the strength to do that, Phil hauled him out by himself, careful to grab his forearms and not his wrists. Ignoring Chris's protests, he sat him on the edge of the bed and ordered him to strip, helping with what he couldn't reach easily.

Chris felt like a rag doll, sort of, but considering his body was behaving like a rag doll and his mind not at all, he couldn't bring himself to care more than a token amount. When he was down to only his undershirt and underwear, Phil helped him under the covers.

"Are you going to be able to sleep now, or should I give you something to help?" Phil asked.

"I don't know," Chris said. "Your house is . . . big."

He had no idea how to explain what he meant by that, but Phil seemed to get it. "I don't know if this will help, but it's daylight and there are only three people in the house: you, me, and Alicia. Oh, and Groucho." The dog had already settled at the foot of the bed.

"That's not exactly how it works," Chris said, or tried to say, but he'd already drifted off.

He woke up once, vaguely, when Phil or Groucho shifted, just enough to realize that the warm, solid weight at his back was _best-friend-doctor-trust-him_ , and fell back asleep almost instantly.

The next time he woke up, Groucho was licking his foot, and Alicia was sitting in the overstuffed chair in the corner, reading a padd and scribbling emendations on it with a stylus. "Stop that," he said, and both Alicia and Groucho looked up.

"Stop what?" Phil asked from behind him, and Chris rolled onto his back. "Are you awake?"

"Groucho was licking my foot," Chris said. "And I don't know if I'm awake yet." He yawned.

"That's fine," Phil said, "but I'm getting up. Groucho, down." Groucho bounced off the bed and out the door, and Phil rolled off and stood at the foot of the bed, stretching. "We've got spare bedrooms," he said, which Chris knew perfectly well as he'd stayed in them on numerous occasions since they'd bought the house twenty years ago. "I'll call your yeoman and get him to move your stuff over."

"Wait, what?" Chris said. "I'm pretty sure I have to agree before you start ordering my yeoman around." He held up one hand before Phil could say anything else. "If you start the next sentence with 'As your doctor,' I'm going to report you for malpractice."

Alicia snickered, and set her padd and stylus to the side. "Just for a few weeks, Chris," she said, "until the hyper-vigilance calms down a bit."

He winced. He hated the clinical term for what he'd been privately calling 'the crazy,' despite Liz's disapproval, almost as much as he hated, well, being hyper-vigilant. Also, he hated the fact that he didn't _know_ if it was going to go away, as he'd always been easily awakened and he'd never done well sleeping in non-secure locations. However, if he said, 'I hate to be a bother,' Alicia would laugh at him and reassure him that he was always a bother and how would this be different? If he said 'no' flat out, Phil would probably shrug and let him not sleep for another two or three days until he agreed.

And _fuck_ it, this was all _bullshit_ and more than anything he'd like his goddamn _brain_ back, even if he couldn't have his body or his ship back. He rolled over onto his side, away from both of them, in a tight ball—well, as tight as he could manage at the moment—and counted breaths. One, two, three, four in; one, two, three, four out. He was pretty sure he'd fall apart if either Phil or Alicia so much as touched him, so he was glad they didn't. They left the room quietly a few moments later.

A few minutes after that, he thought he was neither going to cry nor descend into a panic attack ( _motherfucking_ panic attacks). Maybe. He found a shirt and uniform pants, the shirt his and the pants probably actually Phil's as they didn't fit right, but his weren't within reach. The wheelchair wasn't either, but there was a padd on the bedside table and it could control the wheelchair.

Pulling himself into his chair, he thanked whatever architecture gods had influenced their housebuying such that two youngish, able-bodied people had decided to get a ranch without extraneous steps. The wheelchair did hover but he hated the bouncy feeling of going up or down stairs.

It was around 1800; he'd slept for nearly ten hours, and he definitely needed food. That is, if they had anything he could eat. He shook his head. Of course they'd have something he could eat. It was _Phil_.

Who, as it turned out, was in the kitchen, as was Alicia. "Hey," she said, meeting him halfway and pulling a chair along with her. "May I?"

He nodded—she meant, 'may I invade your personal space?'—and she sat, knees almost touching his.

"I'm sorry," she said, and held out a hand.

He took it and squeezed gently. She was apologizing for triggering him (and didn't that suck? A whole fucking new vocabulary to deal with his new, unwanted brain chemistry. Also, to boot, what a stupid fucking trigger) but instead he replied to her earlier comment. "No, you're right," he said, coughing when his voice came out scratchy. "I'll stay here until you get sick of me."

Phil snorted, and everything was back to normal. Or at least the new 'normal.'

* * *

A week or so after he moved in with Phil and Alicia, he was eating breakfast with them at home when Phil stretched his legs out, apparently, and kicked Chris's chair, which moved slightly.

"Whoops, sorry," Phil said. "Didn't mean to kick you."

"You didn't," Chris said, "just my chair."

Phil frowned. "No, I kicked your leg. I'm sure of it. You're wearing fleece pajama pants, lord only knows why."

"It's cold," Chris said. It was; one of San Francisco's infamous cold summer days. "And I didn't feel it." He frowned.

Phil flipped, instantly, from _best-friend-housemate_ into doctor mode. "Back up," he said, pulling a tricorder from behind the toaster or something, and when Chris did, scanned his legs and then his head. He touched Chris's bare foot lightly, and then a little harder.

Chris shook his head.

"Fuck," Phil said. "To Medical. Don't bother dressing. One of the grafts is fucked up. Why this much later, I have no idea, but—look at me, Chris— _I can fix it_."

 _Good god, his eyes are blue_ , Chris thought absently. Phil wasn't Command, never wanted to be, but when he wanted someone to believe something, he could summon charisma that rivaled Chris's own. Probably would have surpassed it, if he gave a shit.

Phil held his gaze until Chris swallowed and nodded—what else could he do? He trusted Phil with his life and sanity.

Alicia, who had been holding herself perfectly still during this whole exchange—she knew better than to get in between Dr. Boyce and a patient, just as he knew better than to get between her and a witness—stood, and said, "What do you need me to do?"

"Stay here with him for a moment while I call for transport and grab some stuff."

Chris was about to protest that he didn't need a babysitter, but his ears were starting to ring, and when Alicia held out a hand, he took it silently.

* * *

There was something a little bit wrong about having brain surgery so frequently that one didn't need to go get haircuts.

* * *

Once the nerves were reattached, or whatever it was that Phil had done while poking around in his head and neck, the therapists estimated that he was only set back a couple weeks in his recovery. They'd found a new term for what was wrong with him, though—complex regional pain syndrome, which sounded like a load of bullshit but was apparently medicalese for 'your nervous system got fried and now it overreacts randomly.' They kept him in the hospital until they were satisfied with his recovery, but he moved back in with the Cortez-Boyce contingent before too long.

Nonetheless, some days were better than others.

Which was a stupid statement, but that was the only way he could put it when well-meaning acquaintances asked him how he was doing. One day he'd be at PT, thrilled to death that he could walk ten steps without collapsing. Half an hour later, he'd try to eat something like pad thai—a food he liked—and the texture of _something_ in it, maybe the shrimp, he was never quite sure, would send him running (or, more accurately, rolling) to the bathroom to throw up and recover from whatever panic couldn't be suppressed. And that was _with_ the maintenance drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapy and yoga and relaxation techniques and whatever else crap Starfleet Medical could shove down his throat.

Ha. Well, obviously not "shove down his throat" literally, because that was part of the reason he was there in the first place.

The low point, he supposed, other than right after he first got the memories back, and of course after he'd cried all over Liz, was probably when he found himself saying to her, in the low intense tone that was a step below total silence on the 'how pissed is Chris Pike?' scale, "Have you _ever_ lost the only thing that _mattered_ to you in your life?"

Apparently that was the last straw for her, because she carefully put her padd in the pocket of her oversized lab coat, stood to her full height, mere centimeters shorter than he, and said, "You have no idea, Admiral Pike, what I've had and lost."

She left, even though it was her office, and Chris sat in his chair, wondering what the hell to do now. If he'd had his full range of mobility, he'd have gone for a run, probably harder and faster than Phil would have liked, or maybe punched something (a bag, a volunteer, a wall), but those weren't options now.

(To be fair, he probably could have punched something, or put the wheelchair into old-fashioned manual mode and wheeled himself around a track, exhausting his arms if nothing else. He still didn't have a ton of energy, though, and wheelchair-running, or whatever you wanted to call it, didn't have the same kinesthetic feel as a good, hard sprint.)

Predictably, Phil showed up a few minutes later, and let the door close behind him. He sat in the chair Liz had deserted, and raised his eyebrows at Chris.

Chris pressed his lips together and didn't say anything.

"You're an asshole, you know," Phil said, a few silent minutes later.

Chris nodded once, short and sharp.

"Ever occur to you that Liz might have her own story?"

Chris shrugged. Of course it had. He figured if it were important, he'd know about it.

"Her fiance died on the _Farragut_. And by 'fiance' I mean 'possibly the only other human being in existence who could understand what it's like to be Liz,' being that he was blessed with the same ridiculously high scores on all the standard psi tests. She shouldn't be working with anyone at all, but I begged her to. I thought she was the only one of our PTSD specialists that you couldn't mow over."

"Gary Mitchell," Chris said, putting the pieces together. "I remember him." Mitchell had served on the _Yorktown_ briefly, as a training run, some five or seven years ago.

"Thought you might." Phil sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to make you feel bad—no, that's not true. But I'm trying to make you feel bad about being enough of a jackass to Liz that she came to my office and _apologized_ to me, not anything else."

Well, _fuck_. "She apologized to you?" Now he felt like twenty kinds of asshole, not just the usual one."Yep."

"What did you do?"

"Told her you were a dirtbag and I'd go kick your ass for her."

Chris might have laughed, except it was obvious that Phil wasn't joking. "I have no idea what I should do to make it better," he said instead.

"Oh, I don't know, apologize?" Phil said.

Chris flushed. "Well, okay, that."

"It's been ten months."

"And what," Chris said, feeling the embarrassment switch back to anger, "I'm supposed to be _fixed_ by now? Sorry, _Doctor_ , I'm not."

"Settle the fuck down, Chris. No, you're not supposed to be _fixed_. However, on the list of people you're not supposed to take out your bad days on, well, the people who are trying to _help_ you should be near the fucking _top_." Phil stood, slammed his hand on Liz's desk, and immediately looked contrite when Chris flinched. "Fuck. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Chris said, heart racing; he took a handful of gulping breaths. _It's Phil_ , he reminded himself.

Phil closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "Look. You know what you need to do. Do it."

He started walking to the door, but Chris stopped him with a hand to his leg. "Phil. Where is she?"

"My office," he said.

Which was a floor up and half a building over, but not that far. "Okay."

Liz was still sitting in Phil's spare chair, the cushioned one that Alicia had bought him, claiming that she was sick of eating lunch in a hard plastic chair. She looked up when Chris wheeled himself in, the faint hum of the chair probably alerting her to his identity. "Admiral Pike," she said, stiff and poker-faced. Her eyes were red and she was holding a small pile of tissues.

 _Well, fuck._ "Dr. Dehner," he said. She was also Lieutenant Dehner, but he didn't want to imply that he held any power over her. "I came to apologize for my idiotic, thoughtless behavior." God, he sounded stuffier than usual. "I understand if you don't want to see me for a while, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

She gave him a watery half-smile. "And now that Admiral Pike has apologized, would Chris like to say anything?"

"Oh, Liz," he said, and held out a hand. "I knew him."

"I know," she said. "He was—he was here on Earth the last few months because of me." She took his hand, and squeezed once.

"Liz," he said again.

"I mean this in the nicest possible way, but go away, Chris. I'll see you on Thursday." She squeezed his hand again and set it in his lap.

That was the date of his next appointment, three days later. "Okay." He patted her on the shoulder lightly and left.

* * *

Time passed, in that way it did. Chris was able to walk across a room, and then in the hallway, and then down the block. Eventually, the PTs offered him a cane instead of the chair, and while he still did a lot of sitting and used the chair in the evenings, he could walk around during the day. His hands still shook most of the time, and random muscles would cramp up, but compared to paralysis, well, he'd take it.

The hyper-vigilance did, as Alicia predicted, calm down, to the point where he could move back into his own apartment. He still spent more evenings than he probably should have _chez_ Phil and Alicia, but if nothing else, Groucho seemed to appreciate the company.

Liz had signed off on him going back to some sort of work part-time about six months after the _Narada_. The admiralty allowed him to teach a section of tactics, and then two sections, the next semester. He was now, apparently, a professor. Strange.

It didn't necessarily go quickly or smoothly—the number of times in a week that Phil and Alicia and Liz had to remind him not to be an asshole was staggering, especially at first. Even once he officially got out of the chair, it was only for one day out of three, and then one day in two, and then two days in three, et cetera.

And fuck, some of it was hard as hell, especially trying to overcome the food aversions. He got really sick of counseling sessions ending up with him in the bathroom, throwing up what felt like everything he'd eaten for the last month.

"Until you can eat enough to maintain a stable body weight without supplementing half your calories in a given day, no, we can't stop this," Liz said as she rubbed his back after a particularly disastrous session.

"Fuck," he said, and leaned back over the commode for another round.

* * *

The one-year anniversary of the _Narada_ came up faster than Chris had possibly expected. The _Enterprise_ was safely away patrolling a portion of the Neutral Zone; he was surprised, as he thought that for sure they'd want Kirk and the ship herself there for whatever sort of celebrations happened.

On the other hand, they'd _never_ made the _Kelvin_ baby speak at any of the memorials for that ship, so maybe someone in the 'fleet's PR department actually had a heart. The best thing for the _Enterprise_ and her very young crew was for them to continue racking up successes out in the field, rather than being gawked at and endlessly bothered about how they felt about 'surviving.' How they felt about being the youngest crew. How they felt about saving the Federation.

On the other _other_ hand, that meant that _he_ was pretty much the only person on Earth who had been on the _Enterprise_ , so of course _he_ got asked to speak at the ceremony.

At least this time, they were smart enough to get Phil to ask him, rather than sending someone from the PR office or, worse, Komack or Barnett.

"No," he said, even before Phil finished his admittedly-embarrassed request. "Absolutely not."

"I knew you were going to say that. And so did Barnett," Phil said, and heaved a deep sigh. "Which is why he told me to remind you of all the grieving students and parents out there who want nothing more than closure, and that you are the one person who can give it to them." He rolled his eyes.

Chris rolled his, too. "Fuck," he said. It was true: appeals to _think of the children!_ almost always got to him, and Barnett, the bastard, knew that. It was why he'd been able to bribe him into staying on Earth: _You'll be helping the next generation of Starfleet officers!_ The _Enterprise_ had been a pretty big inducement, but he'd been in a pretty good position to get it without having to do his time as a recruiter and professor. "All right. Ten minutes, no more."

"You can tell them that. I wash my hands of this."

Which was how he ended up giving a twenty-minute speech.

He worked on the speech the same way he'd worked on his dissertation: completely academically, forgetting that he'd known the people involved, as if he were reporting on something from the Hundred Years' War. It was a good speech; he knew it, and Alicia agreed.

He delivered the speech as if he were delivering the St. Crispin's Day speech from _Henry V_. Fortunately, there were only a handful of people in the audience who knew the difference between Chris Pike performing and Chris Pike speaking honestly, and they weren't telling.

He made it through about half an hour of the reception afterward before he left. Phil followed him, thank God, and dragged him to his house rather than letting Chris go to his apartment, and busted open the good bottle of Andorian ice vodka.

Never mind that alcohol (and caffeine, and everything fun in life) was contraindicated by some of the drugs he was on. It didn't count when his physician was the one getting him drunk.

The hangover the next morning was at least as much emotional as alcohol-related.

* * *

The _Enterprise_ was set to return on 2259.220, and it and its crew would be grounded for six months, pending some critical updates. Some of the crew would be reassigned, and the rest would be prepared for the longer mission ahead of them.

As an admiral, even though he wasn't supervising the _Enterprise_ in any sort of way, Chris had access to the ship's logs and official reports. Although he didn't listen to the logs or read reports _too_ regularly—it still hurt sometimes—he did keep up.

Occasionally, Dr. McCoy's name would come up in the reports, and Chris would smile. He didn't think too hard as to why.

* * *

"So Dr. McCoy will be back soon," Phil said one evening over dinner; Alicia was still at the office.

"And the rest of the _Enterprise_ ," Chris said, and forked another bite off of his tamale. He tried to keep a straight face, but was afraid he couldn't conceal the way his heart beat faster.

"Somehow I doubt you'll be as happy to see Lieutenant Scott as you will be to see McCoy."

"Lieutenant Scott didn't put my brain back together," Chris shot back.

"So it's gratitude, huh?" Phil leaned back in his chair. "Man, if I had a credit for every time one of my surgery patients wanted to get me in the sack . . . I'd have maybe a credit."

"Shut the fuck up, Phil." He said it with maybe a little too much venom.

"Chris," Phil said, gentler this time. "Consenting adults; I don't give a shit, never have. You know that."

"I suppose here you say something like, 'I just want you to be happy.'" It sounded less bitter in his head.

"Yeah, if you want me to say it."

"Don't need to." Christ, after thirty fucking years, he _knew_.

Phil smiled, and grabbed the bowl of _refritos_.

A moment later, though, Chris said, "And I call bullshit on your statistic, by the way. Gotta be a hell of a lot more than just one."

Phil just laughed.

Chris ate a few more bites and watched Phil for a moment, before saying, "You know, Phil, I'm not the only one who lost the _Enterprise_."

Phil looked up, spoon halfway to his mouth. "Chris," he said, setting the spoon back down, "I was only going because it was _you_ and your dream." He smiled. "I happen to like living in my house, and I wasn't looking forward to giving Groucho back to my niece."

"Oh," Chris said. "Yeah. I knew that. I mean, I suspected. But—"

"Don't worry," Phil said. "You don't need to say it, either."

"Oh, good."

* * *

The _Enterprise_ returned to Earth on a Monday.

Chris stood, cane in his right hand, with Phil and Alicia in the corner of the reception room, nodding at Winona Kirk as she spoke with Admiral Barnett. There was a tasteful mix of Federation and Starfleet dignitaries as well as members of the media and the occasional non-Fleet family member of the ship's crew. He recognized Spock's father Sarek in another corner, although he hadn't known the Vulcan was still on Earth. Also, he would have put half his year's salary on the fact that the girl standing with Winona, maybe ten years old and brunette, with a familiar cast to her face and an even more familiar accent, was Dr. McCoy's daughter Joanna.

Before too long, though, the people of the hour showed up, dress uniforms and all—the command crew of the _Enterprise_. Admiral Barnett officially welcomed them back in possibly the shortest speech the man had ever given in his life, and then he stepped aside to let friends and family members swarm them.

Chris watched, a fond smile on his face, as Jim hugged his mother; the girl was confirmed as Joanna McCoy as she jumped into her father's arms and hugged him for all she was worth. He didn't recognize the woman in commander's stripes who greeted Lieutenant Sulu, but she was most likely his mother, based on her age and their resemblance. Spock and Sarek bowed at each other.

His overacute hearing caught his name, and he looked up to see Winona gesturing to his corner. "You've been spotted," Phil said with a laugh.

"Oh, no," Chris deadpanned, and grinned as Jim loped over to him, Winona trailing in his wake.

"Admiral Pike, oh my god, you're _walking_! I mean—" Jim stopped, straightened, and said, "Good to see you, sir. Thank you for coming to meet us. I'm glad to see you in such good health."

"It's good to see you as well, Captain Kirk," Chris said gravely, and then laughed, because Jim's imitation of a sober command tone was just that—an imitation. "Wasn't a year of command supposed to settle you down?"

Jim's bright grin flashed, and he said, "I'm just a little light-headed from the change in elevation."

"Good one," Phil said. "Hi, Winona."

"Good to see you, Phil, Alicia, Chris."

"No, really, Jim," Chris said, after smiling at Winona again, "I've only heard good things about you this last year. Congratulations." He switched hands on the cane and held out his right hand, and Jim took it, giving it a quick downward shake before releasing it.

"Thanks, Admiral Pike. That—means quite a lot, as you might guess." Jim blinked, looked over at his mother for a second, and then smiled again.

Joanna McCoy suddenly appeared between Winona and Jim, and Chris was struck by how much she _did_ resemble her father. The hair was maybe curlier, but the eyes and face shape were definitely his.

"Hey, Jo," Jim said. "Have you met Admiral Pike yet?"

'Jo' shook her head and tried to hide behind Winona.

"Hi, there," Chris said politely. He liked kids—other people's—but unlike Phil, who also had no kids, he never quite knew what to say to them, and ten-year-olds were about the most difficult for him. He had no idea if he was supposed to hold out a hand for her to shake or just avoid all that since he was pretty much old enough to be her grandfather.

"Hi," she said, almost inaudibly.

"Jo? Where'd you—oh, there you are," came a familiar voice, although one he hadn't heard for a full year. McCoy joined their little group and said, "Hello, Commander Kirk," to Winona as he put a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "I apol—oh."

 _Oh, indeed_. Damn, McCoy looked good in the dress uniform, even if there was a reddish line above his collar indicating that he'd been tugging at it. "Dr. McCoy," Chris said, when the silence had stretched on for a few seconds longer than necessary.

"Admiral Pike," McCoy said. "Sir. Good to see you. Thank you for coming to meet us."

"Had to make sure that you hadn't broken my ship," Chris said, trying to joke but probably failing.

" _My_ ship," Jim said under his breath, and that broke the spell.

Chris looked over at Jim and caught a glimpse of Joanna's face. Eyes wide, she looked simultaneously fascinated and horrified. _Crap_ , he thought. "She was mine first, Jim, but I'm glad that you have her now." He smiled, and Jim smiled back. "I still ask Captain One about _my_ ship, and I haven't commanded the _Yorktown_ in, what, five years now?"

"I don't care who Number One has as a CMO," Phil said. "It's still _my_ Sickbay."

Everyone laughed.

Later, Chris had no idea if it was a conspiracy, but he found himself sitting at a cafe-style table with only the company of Dr. McCoy. The silence hovered between comfortable and uncomfortable for a few minutes, and then Dr. McCoy said, "I understand by the rules of polite society, I'm not supposed to comment on this, but as Jim apparently also said something earlier, I'll take my chances. Admiral Pike, it is so good to see you walking again."

"Thank you," Chris said, an automatic response. "Actually," he said a moment later, "I should be thanking you, since I'm sure I never did."

"No need," McCoy said stiffly. "It's my job."

Chris shook his head. "That's not how it works," he said. "You've been in Starfleet long enough—a doctor long enough—to know that."

"True enough," McCoy said. "It doesn't mean I expect to hear it."

"Nonetheless," Chris said, and turned to face McCoy more squarely. "Dr. McCoy, thank you so much. Without your phenomenal skill, I don't know if I'd be alive, let alone walking occasionally."

McCoy blinked a couple of times and swallowed once, hard, before he said, "You're welcome, Admiral Pike."

Chris had the strangest urge to smile, and not in the pleasant-acknowledgment sort of way. No, he could feel the world's goofiest grin trying to spread across his face, and he was only partially successful in suppressing it.

McCoy smiled back, hesitantly, and then he turned, frowning, a moment later. "Is that—Excuse me, admiral," he said, and stood, walking quickly away.

Chris followed his movements and saw—were Jim and Joanna throwing grapes at each other? Surely not.

* * *

When the reception had ended and he and Phil and Alicia were walking out of the building, Alicia said what Chris had been dreading for the last hour. "So, when did that happen?"

"When did what happen?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

"You and the good doctor."

Phil cleared his throat, and Alicia patted him on the shoulder. "You're the _best_ doctor."

Chris snorted, and Alicia rolled her eyes. "Answer my question," she said.

"I thought lawyers never asked a question unless they already knew the answer," he said.

"That's true," she said, "but humor me anyway."

"Nothing happened," Chris said. "Nothing's _going_ to happen."

"Why the hell not?" Alicia asked.

Chris stopped, turned to her, and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, please," she said, with a dismissive gesture. "You're clearly smitten; he's clearly smitten. Go for it."

"Alicia, dear, you know the only person in existence who loves you more than I do is Phil, but can we _please_ not discuss this?"

She looked as if she were about to say something else, but didn't; instead, she nodded, and said, "Yeah. Okay. How are classes going?"

The conversation turned, but it couldn't block the voice in the back of his head saying, _Smitten!_ on auto-repeat.

Late at night, of course, the questions came back: _sure_ , the voice said, _other people may think McCoy looks 'smitten' or whatever, and sure, you look better than you did a year ago, but is there any possible way he's going to want to deal with all the shit that comes with being with you?_

And fuck if he could answer _that_.

* * *

A light knock sounded on his office door—actually, his doorway. Chris looked up, and Jim Kirk—Captain Jim Kirk—stood there, a couple weeks after the _Enterprise_ got back. "Captain Kirk," he said. "Office hours are normally for students, but of course you're welcome to come in."

"I checked with your yeoman," Kirk said as he came into the room and took a seat in one of the chairs opposite the desk. "You don't have any appointments this afternoon, sir."

"No, I'm free," Chris said. "I'd stand, but I had PT at lunchtime and my legs are made of rubber. How are you?" He was rather proud of the fact that he could say that without wincing or any attempt at self-deprecation.

"I'm fine," Jim said, but pressed his lips together briefly. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted," Chris said, the response automatic, but he frowned. What on Earth was this about?

"I'm not here as Captain Kirk," Jim said. "I'm here as Jim, and I need to talk to—Chris," he said, the name falling awkwardly between them.

"Okay," Chris said, drawing the second vowel out. "What's going on here, Jim?"

"I've never had to have this conversation before, for a long list of reasons, and I'm not really comfortable with having this conversation with my former academic advisor, but I think the traditional thing to say here is, 'If you break his heart, I'll kick your ass.'" Jim winced. "Not that I would actually kick your ass because that's not fair, but I think you get my point."

"Ah, yes," Chris said. Outwardly he didn't move, but inside his mind, he was screaming, _Yes!_

The nearly-palpable awkwardness extended for only a few seconds before Jim said, "Now can we pretend this conversation never happened?"

"No," Chris said. "I think I'm required to tell you that I have no intention of breaking his heart, first. Or at least not on purpose."

"I knew I forgot something," Jim said, and they both laughed.

"Look, I don't even know if—I haven't—god, Jim, you're pretty close to the last person I want to discuss this with," Chris said.

"I know," Jim said. "And god knows I don't want to be here either, but Bones is my best friend and, I don't know. It's like I feel responsible for him or something." He shuddered theatrically. "Anyway, got that over with. Um. Sports? Weather?"

The painfully-earnest look on his face caused Chris to break out in real laughter, and Jim joined in a minute or two later.

* * *

It probably didn't say much about his half-formed protest to Jim that he had Dr. McCoy's clinic schedule memorized, or that he rescheduled his appointment with Liz such that he'd be leaving Starfleet Medical at roughly the same time as Dr. McCoy. That is, assuming Liz didn't find any reason to keep him over, as if psychotherapy were some sort of detention.

He told himself that he wasn't fourteen and he should probably just comm the man and ask him to dinner or something, but if he did that, he'd probably find himself discussing it with Liz and that he very much wanted to avoid.

Which is why he ended up discussing it with Liz.

"Wait, let me get this straight," Liz said, the glee in her voice unmistakable. "You rescheduled your psych appointment so you might have the opportunity to run into _someone_ , who you decline to name." She suppressed a grin poorly. "Can't you just comm him?"

Chris leaned forward and put his head into his hands. "I'm regressing. Can't you do something about that?"

"I can dial his number for you," she said, still trying very hard not to smile. She held out her hand, as if she actually expected him to put his comm unit into it.

Well, there went his dignity, and his ability to pretend that, oh, the entire _Federation_ didn't know. Hell, the _Klingons_ probably knew, as well.

"You want to leave early and wait outside the door?" she suggested.

He sat up enough to give her most of a very rude gesture in Andorian (he lacked the antennae to complete it), and she almost fell off her seat laughing.

"But seriously," Liz said a minute or two later, after she'd regained her composure. "It's good to see you seriously considering a romantic relationship with so much confidence."

He sighed. "It's bullshit," he said. "All of it."

"All of what?"

"I'm sure you can guess."

"I can, but you're supposed to tell me. Didn't we establish this a while ago?"

Chris sighed again. "I have no way of knowing if he's going to think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Since he doesn't know all the drawbacks."

"Who ever does?" Liz said. "I guess the only way you'll know is if you ask him."

"God, that _sucks_ ," he said, groaning.

"Yes," Liz said. "Most of us discovered this at age thirteen."

"Which was, what, last year, for you?"

It was her turn to give him a rude gesture.

* * *

Chris did not wait outside any door, nor did he leave his appointment early, but he did run into McCoy outside Starfleet Medical.

Actually, he didn't so much run into McCoy as 'found McCoy waiting for him,' closer to the exit from the psych wing than the general exit. His stomach plummeted into his shoes, but the only thing he said was, "Do you have dinner plans, Dr. McCoy?"

"Not yet," McCoy said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Sir."

"Drop the sir, and I might be able to fix that."

"Drop the 'Doctor,' and I might say yes," McCoy retorted, and then actually physically took a step back. "That is."

Chris was startled into a laugh, but gestured with his free hand in the general direction of town. "Come on; let's go. Thai food okay?"

"Mexican instead?" McCoy said.

"Indian?" Chris countered. "I got overdosed on Mexican food when I lived with Phil and Alicia."

"Indian's fine. Alicia cooks a lot?" McCoy asked as they started walking to the transit stop.

"No, Phil. Mexican's the only cuisine he doesn't fuck up. Seriously, the man can make damn fine enchiladas but burns spaghetti."

McCoy laughed, as expected.

They only had to wait for a minute or two for the bus to come by, and the ride itself was only five or ten minutes. In fact, it was probably shorter to walk, but Chris resolutely put that fact out of his head.

They got to the Dancing Ganesha, and being that it was a Wednesday night, the place was almost deserted. At Chris's direction, they got a small table with chairs, because they were easier for him to get into and out of. The cane stood unobtrusively in the corner.

They placed their orders, and Chris was ripping the corner off a piece of _naan_ when McCoy said, "Look, Admiral Pike—"

"Chris," he said, interrupting. "Or 'Pike' if you can't manage that."

"Chris," McCoy said, frowning at him. "I know Jim talked to you, and now we're here, and all I can ask is, what's going on?"

 _Oh._ The flippant answer of, 'We're eating dinner' came to his mind first, but McCoy deserved better than that. _Well, fuck._ He didn't want to do this, but he should. He took a sip of water and flicked his eyes to the corners of the room briefly.

McCoy was still looking at him levelly, and Chris took another breath, careful not to sigh. "I'm interested in you."

McCoy nodded but didn't say anything.

"I'm abysmally terrible at this," Chris said, sort of as an aside, but also as a warning.

McCoy rolled his eyes at that, but still didn't say anything.

"No, I mean it. I've got three spectacularly failed relationships—in thirty years, which should tell you something. To boot, I'm twenty years older and three ranks higher than you, as well as being a patient of yours. My hair's been gray so long I almost can't remember what color it was originally. My nervous system doesn't work right, and that's not even talking about my brain." He sighed. "And like I said, I'm awful at—this stuff. I tend to get buried in work, and I forget anniversaries and birthdays and that all my Saturday nights from here on out should be date nights, not work-late nights. But you—you make me want to try again."

"Former patient," McCoy said, a full, terrifying minute later. "I signed off on being your doctor the minute I turned you over to Dr. Boyce on Earth."

"Ah, yeah, Phil mentioned that," Chris said, nonplussed.

"As to the rest—" McCoy sighed himself. "I'm gonna be on a starship with Jim Kirk for a while."

"I know," Chris said, still not sure where McCoy was going.

"Do you know why my ex-wife ditched me?"

Chris shook his head.

"Because, unsurprisingly, when stuff all went to hell, I got buried in work and started ignoring her."

"Okay," Chris said, "so we've got that in common. Possibly not a good thing."

McCoy smiled, one-sided and only about half sarcastic. "No, but it means we have a fighting chance of understanding each other. About the rank differences—you're not my patient, and I'm not in your chain of command. I don't know enough about those particular regulations to know what we're supposed to do or not do—"

"They're purposefully vague," Chris admitted. "Mostly they can be used to prosecute in the case of something going horribly wrong, but otherwise, if everyone's consenting and of age, Starfleet doesn't care."

"Ah," McCoy said. "And I'm guessing you've figured out that I don't particularly care about the age gap."

"I was coming to that conclusion, yes," Chris said. But he still hadn't said—

"What does that leave?"

"Everything else." Why was it so hard to say the word 'disability'? Chris put his hands on the table instead of in his lap and relaxed enough to let the omnipresent fine tremor show.

"Oh," McCoy said, a rueful look on his face as his gaze dropped to Chris's hands. He raised his eyes back to Chris's and said, "You really think _that_ was going to matter to me?"

A giant weight that he didn't know was there lifted off of Chris's chest, and he felt his face get warm briefly, and then cool off. "I had no way of knowing," he said. "I'm not paid to believe the best of people."

"No, I guess not," McCoy said. He looked down at his own hands for a moment, and then back up. "Dr. Boyce has been sending me regular updates on your health. I'll tell him to stop, but I need you to tell me what I need to know."

"I can do that." _I think. Maybe._ "But not in the middle of a restaurant."

The food came then, conveniently, and Chris neatly avoided the rice and spooned his _saag aloo_ onto _naan_ instead.

McCoy didn't say anything at first, but asked a few bites in, "Okay if I eat rice?"

"If not, it's too late now," Chris said, but he smiled so McCoy would know it was a joke. "Nope, doesn't bother me."

By some sort of unspoken agreement, they avoided the topic of— _them_ —for the rest of the meal. Instead, Chris regaled McCoy with tales of students, and McCoy told stories of Kirk at the Academy and then on the _Enterprise_.

"For what it's worth," McCoy said at one point, "I almost asked Jim to turn the ship around when I heard that one of the neural grafts didn't take, and it wasn't because I didn't trust Dr. Boyce to do the surgery."

"It's worth a fair amount, thanks," Chris said, and smiled.

He insisted on paying the bill, citing his astronomically-high pay grade, and McCoy acquiesced surprisingly gracefully.

"I can probably walk home, if we go slowly enough," Chris offered, as they stood outside the restaurant. "It would be easier to talk."

McCoy swallowed his first response, and said, "All right," instead.

It took a couple blocks of silence before Chris could speak. "There are two problems," he said.

McCoy nodded.

"Obviously you know what happened, so you know some of the physical effects, and the CRPS. I don't have a ton of stamina." He paused, and smiled. "Correction. Let me rephrase that. I'm fifty-two years old, so I've definitely got stamina in that department."

McCoy huffed a quiet laugh.

"I just can't stand for very long without support. Or kneel, walk, et cetera. I'll have to do physical therapy for the rest of my life to keep the secondary effects of the CRPS from happening—the degeneration, mostly—and some days the physical therapy is so exhausting I just fall over asleep as soon as I get home. My hands shake, and my manual dexterity is at about eighty-five percent, according to the experts, although I was above average before so you might not notice any difference. Well—you're a surgeon. You might."

"Probably not," McCoy said. "Don't care anyway. Go on."

"I'm pretty much always in some amount of pain, and if I take enough of the painkillers so that I'm not, I'm practically comatose. I'm not entirely sure how that's going to affect things, but it will." Chris tightened his grip around the handle of the cane, and stuffed his other hand—shaking noticeably—in his pocket.

"You don't know?" McCoy asked, glancing at him.

"Well, all right, I do, somewhat," Chris said. This part was a little more uncomfortable, and he hadn't even gotten to all the psychological stuff. "I thought it would be better if I were a little more prepared for the physical aspect of a relationship." Actually, Liz had suggested it, in what was _actually_ the most embarrassing conversation of their professional relationship, but he'd agreed.

"Sex surrogate?" McCoy asked.

"Yes."

"Did it help?"

"Yes. I'm capable of—" What on Earth was he supposed to say here? "Sex. Arousal, erection, orgasm—the plumbing basically works. Within limits." Kind of. On good days. If nothing went wrong. "Look, it's probably easier to tell you what I can't do." He took a deep breath, pausing for a moment.

McCoy stopped and turned to face him, and Chris could practically _feel_ the need to touch, to help, to heal, radiating off of him. "Do you want me to ask instead?"

"No," Chris said, and coughed. "No. But you can touch me."

It wasn't actually the first time McCoy had touched him; obviously, in the course of having been his patient, they'd been in physical contact. It was, however, one of the rare times that Chris had been touched by anyone non-therapeutically, who wasn't Phil or Alicia, in the last year, and certainly the first time he'd been touched by a potential lover in longer than he cared to admit.

None of that explained why McCoy's hand felt so warm against his upper arm, even though the two layers of uniform he was wearing.

"We don't have to talk about this now," McCoy said, voice low and intimate.

Chris sighed. "We probably should, or at least before anything happens."

McCoy frowned, but Chris held up a hand. "No, I actually mean _anything_."

McCoy dropped his hand from Chris's arm.

Chris rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean _that_. I'm sorry for not being clear. This is—" He sighed. "I've managed to send myself into a panic attack with a toothbrush before, and don't ask me about flossing. I don't do well with things in my mouth."

"Okay," McCoy said.

"I'm sure you can extrapolate what that means."

"No rice with takeout?"

Chris smiled. "Something like that."

"So, I'm guessing the rice is because of the texture, and toothbrushes, flossing, fingers, spoons, et cetera is because they're foreign objects?"

"Yeah, that's about it," Chris said. "Somewhere I have a list of foods that are usually okay; you can have a copy if you're interested. But more importantly, I think I've just eliminated first and third bases, so . . ." He spread his hands.

"Now, see, with that opening line, I should suggest goin' straight to second," McCoy said, his accent deepening. Chris thought it was probably intentional. "But my mama raised me proper, and I'd never say anything like that to someone I actually _liked_."

Chris laughed, surprisingly relieved. "Come on, Rhett Butler; walk me home."

"Hate that movie," McCoy muttered under his breath. He started to offer Chris his arm, but stopped, and locked his hands behind his back instead.

"Oh, fuck that," Chris said, quite clearly, and circled to McCoy's other side, where he could offer his free hand.

McCoy took it without any stupid questions; it was dark enough that Chris could see that he smiled and not much else. "Stepping up to bat?"

"Might as well," Chris said, and immediately felt stupid. On the other hand, in retrospect, it was only the second or third most ridiculous way he'd ever gotten into a relationship. Of course, he couldn't think of anything to say to make it sound less like he was only in it for the convenience factor—about as far from the truth as possible—so he stayed quiet.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, before McCoy said, "Anything else we need to talk about right away?"

"Probably," Chris said, "but I'm tired enough for one day." He'd meant emotionally—hell of a roller coaster he'd been on—but he realized he was also physically tired after he said that. All of a sudden, his limbs felt twice as heavy as usual, and he—well, he didn't quite stumble, but it was close.

"You're in Glenn Hall, right?" McCoy said, catching him under the elbow.

Chris nodded.

"That's about five blocks from here. Gonna make it?"

It would be so easy to get defensive here— _I said I could before, didn't I?_ —but he'd had a year of Liz and Phil reminding him that there was really no point in being an asshole for shit like this. Chris managed to take a deep breath, assess his physical state as objectively as he could, and say, "Yes, although we won't be setting any land-speed records."

They didn't, unless someone kept records for how slow a human being could walk and still be moving forward. After a block or so, the leaden feeling evaporated from his limbs, and he felt considerably better, at least back to where he'd been. Chris didn't miss any more steps, and McCoy tried not to hover and generally succeeded.

They didn't say much until they reached Chris's door, still on the third floor; Starfleet had offered him a first-floor apartment, but people walking by outside weren't worth the convenience of less travel time.

"So you've walked me to my door," Chris said lightly, although his pulse was racing. "Going to kiss me on the cheek and tell me to say hi to my parents?"

"It would be the gentlemanly thing to do," McCoy said, holding himself a handspan away, shoulders stiff.

"Are we going to the junior prom next month, then?" Chris asked, and without waiting for a response, grabbed a handful of McCoy's shirt, pulling him close enough to kiss.

And kiss they did—no tongues but not in the least chaste. McCoy's hands hesitated for a moment before resting lightly on Chris's waist; Chris's hands flattened against McCoy's chest before sliding over his shoulders.

He wondered just for a moment why a minimal five-centimeter height difference meant he had to take the more vulnerable position, but then realized he actually needed the support, and shut down that line of thinking quickly.

"So what color _was_ your hair?" McCoy asked, low in his ear, after the kiss came to a natural end and they were merely standing in the hall, clinging to each other for all the world to see. (Or at least all of Chris's neighbors, who weren't around anyway.)

Chris laughed gently, and said, "Come on in for a second." He didn't doubt that McCoy already knew—it was probably in his file if nothing else—but he pulled away, palmed open the door, walked over to the end table by the couch, and picked up a holoframe. He waited for a moment until the set of pictures cycled back to the beginning, and then handed it to McCoy.

Who looked at it, eyebrow raised. "Who's that in the picture with you?" he asked.

"Don't recognize him?" Chris asked, grinning as he propped himself up against the wall. "Wait a minute or two."

McCoy did, and when the look of recognition dawned a few moments later, Chris's grin broadened.

"Why, yes, Dr. McCoy, that is your boss." The whole holoframe was full of pictures of him and Phil over the years, mostly taken by Alicia, but she was in a few of them.

"Quite a pair, the two of you," McCoy said, neutrally.

"Yeah," Chris said, and took the frame back, replacing it on the end table. "It's never a bad thing if the CMO and the captain are close."

"Not exactly what I meant," McCoy muttered, again under his breath.

Chris heard him quite clearly, and laughed. "You, me, couch," he said, pointing.

"You mean—"

"You know what," Chris said, deliberately interrupting, "I don't know what's going to happen. It's never been worth the possibility of panic and throwing up and injury to find out before this."

He had no idea what it said about either of them that McCoy apparently processed that as a romantic statement. McCoy's face softened, the lines in his forehead from the perpetual scowl smoothing away, and he held out a hand.

Despite the fact that, as McCoy grumbled, they were two grown-ass men and it wasn't that big of a couch, they managed to arrange themselves in a way beneficial to both. Which meant Chris was on top, legs loosely tangled with McCoy's, hands on his shoulders as they kissed.

It was getting easier, the whole kissing-without-tongues thing, although it vaguely felt like he was in middle school again. "Is this working for you?" he asked, after a few minutes.

In response, McCoy shifted his hips, and Chris felt— _oh, yes_ —McCoy was hard. "That answer your question?"

Instead of answering, he nibbled the side of McCoy's neck, and _yes_ , he could do this.

McCoy's hands dropped to Chris's back, and then down to his rear end. "Oh, god, McCoy," Chris said on a groan, and then frowned, pushing up to look at his face. "McCoy? Leonard?"

"Leonard's fine," McCoy said, and sat up for another kiss.

"I think somewhere in here," Chris murmured sleepily, some time later, "I'm supposed to ask you if there's anything I need to know about _you_."

McCoy's—Leonard's—chest shook briefly with a silent chuckle. "No, nothing in particular that you don't already know," he said. "World's most boring sexual history. Some fun in college, and then married my high school sweetheart. Had a kid, got divorced, came off to Starfleet Academy, and was unfortunately too busy and exhausted to fuck around most of the time."

"And since then?"

"Nothin'." Leonard shifted. "Tested clean, if you wondered."

"Good to know. Obviously you know my entire medical history. Or close enough."

"Yep."

"No one, really?" Chris asked.

"Wasn't worth it," Leonard said, and Chris felt him shrug. "I knew what—who—I actually wanted."

"Ah." A pause, and then, "You do mean me, right?"

"Nope. You haven't been an admiral long enough. Barnett, now, there's a guy—"

Chris rolled his eyes and smacked McCoy on the shoulder, not hard.

"Other than that," Leonard said, "if you can deal with my personality, the fact that I've got a ten-year-old daughter, and the fact that I can't get rid of Jim Kirk no matter how I try, I think we'll do okay."

"I can't get rid of him either," Chris said, with a sigh that turned into a yawn. "And Joanna's cute, and I happen to think your personality is a bonus."

Leonard laughed again. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"She likes you, I think."

"Oh?" Chris asked.

"That is, she told me it was _totally gross_ to see me flirting with someone and I shouldn't ever do it again in front of her, but that you seemed nice enough."

Chris laughed. "I'll take it."

A few companionably-silent minutes later, Leonard shifted again. "I should probably get going," he said, and the reluctance in his tone was immensely gratifying. "You're falling asleep on me."

"But you're so comfortable," Chris said in protest, but managed, with Leonard's unobtrusive help, to rearrange himself so he was sitting on one corner of the couch.

Leonard swung his legs so that he was sitting on the couch as well, and started putting his shoes back on. "I don't have any shifts this weekend," he said, as he retied the laces.

"Neither do I," Chris said. "Friday evening? Dinner and a movie, or something else traditional?"

Leonard snorted. "Hoping I'll put out at the end of the night?"

"Yes, please. Should I bring flowers?" Chris tried to keep his tone light, even as he balled his hands into fists to hide the shaking.

"No need," Leonard said, and held out a hand.

Chris took it, leaning into his side. God, Leonard smelled good, like Indian food and something woodsy and a little bit like hospital antiseptic. He wanted to lick the other man's neck, but exhaustion was dragging him down. Oh well. Friday night. "Can I see you tomorrow anyway?"

"Yeah, sure," Leonard said. "Lunch, dinner? Or," he said, wincing, "something that has nothing to do with food?"

"Lunch is fine," Chris said. He got his feet under him and saw Leonard to the door. One last kiss and a clinging press of bodies, and the door swooshed shut behind Leonard.

God, that had been good. As tired as he was, he was still elated—he almost wanted to dance around the apartment, as undignified as that was.

He didn't, although he allowed himself a brief celebratory fist-pump.

* * *

They skipped the movie.

One breathless kiss at the door, and Chris said, chest heaving, "I don't know if I can wait that long."

"Me neither," Leonard said. The relief mixed with desire written on his face was gratifying.

The only reason they didn't skip dinner was because Leonard hadn't eaten lunch. "You know," Chris said, as they ate take-out deli sandwiches quickly in his living room, "if you'd just bothered to grab a peanut-butter sandwich, we could be naked by now." He set his sandwich down and unfastened his jacket, not missing how McCoy watched.

"I try not to eat dinner naked," Leonard drawled a moment or so later, licking mayonnaise off his fingers. "Unhygienic."

"Awww," Chris said. He felt—buoyant: light-hearted, or something. Confident, maybe. This part—after he knew they were going to end up in bed—this part, he knew what to do. He could tease and seduce with the best of them, once it was a sure thing. He tried very hard to concentrate on that part and ignored the fact that he had no idea what was going to happen once they actually were _in_ bed.

Leonard finished his sandwich and chips first; Chris ate more slowly, as he didn't want to set himself off. Eventually, though, he set aside the last bite, slugged down the end of the protein shake he'd had in lieu of chips or pretzels (both iffy), and scrubbed his hands on his pants. "Done?" he asked hopefully.

"I am," Leonard said. "What now?"

Chris raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, no," Leonard said. "You're the one directing the proceedings."

"Oh, I get to be on top?" Chris said, grinning.

"If you want," Leonard said, sprawling against the back of the sofa, letting his knees fall wide.

Normally Chris didn't really care what other men were wearing, because it all looked good on the floor, but damn, McCoy really made tailored slacks and an Oxford look appealing. Moreso when the shirt was pulled taut against his chest and the pants pulled taut against his—

Chris's mouth went dry. "There's a very strong chance," he managed a moment or so later, "that we won't even make it that far."

"That's fine," Leonard said. He stood and collected the detritus from dinner, dropping it in the 'cycler, before stopping in front of Chris and holding out his hands.

Chris stared at them for a moment; he'd never allowed anyone other than Phil to help him up that way, preferring to push up on his own strength or, better yet, not sit in a chair low enough to require help. On the other hand, it was Leonard. Chris took his hands.

Apparently he'd been paying attention; Leonard merely tensed his muscles and braced himself, rather than trying to pull. A moment later, they were almost nose-to-nose; would have been, except for the five centimeters McCoy had on him. Chris shook his head mentally. He'd apparently been sleeping with too many short people if it bothered him every time he ran up against it. _So to speak._ "Bedroom?" he said, voice sounding strange in his ears, lower and rougher than usual.

"Yes, please."

Starfleet didn't issue large apartments, even to admirals, so the trip to the bedroom probably shouldn't have taken five minutes. But it did, and Leonard's hair was adorably ruffled by the time they got there. Once inside, lights ordered to fifty percent, Chris watched Leonard scan over the bed pushed up against the wall, the stack of hyposprays and pill bottles on the dresser, and the wheelchair neatly folded up in one corner.

Or maybe he was looking at the stack of padds on the bedside table, the boring green plaid comforter, and the not-Starfleet-issue dresser Chris had rescued from a garage sale and refinished ten years ago. It was hard to tell, without asking, and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask.

"At least it's a queen-sized bed?" he said, trying to make a joke.

"The only thing disappointing about your bed is that we're not in it already," Leonard said.

 _Oh._ He could get used to this—the low, simmering heat in Leonard's voice, and the way his dark eyes seemed only to get darker. Dropping his hands to Leonard's waist, he tugged the tails of his shirt out of his pants, and started unbuttoning the shirt from the bottom. Leonard unbuttoned his own collar and cuffs, and when their hands met in the middle, he laughed and pulled both the shirt and its accompanying t-shirt over his head without undoing the final, middle button.

It ruffled his hair more than it had been, and Leonard tried vainly to settle it back in order as Chris laughed. "It's just going to get messed up more."

"Doesn't stop it from feeling weird," Leonard said.

"Looks cute," Chris said.

Leonard snorted. "Well, I guess I'll take what I can get."

"Lose more clothing, and I'll see what I can do about the compliments."

Leonard cocked an eyebrow. "Ditto."

Chris felt his face grow warm; he'd avoided thinking about what he looked like since the _Narada_ , despite Phil's reassurance that since he'd gained back most of the weight, he looked fine, and he would _not_ start now. Besides . . . "Nothing you haven't seen."

"I may have seen," Leonard said, "but I wasn't lookin'." His fingers, oddly warm, stole under Chris's jacket, and slipped it off his shoulders.

Yeah, he knew. Speaking of looking, Leonard was standing in front of him shirtless and he'd barely spared the man a glance. _Travesty_.

Well, also, looking at McCoy distracted him from the fact that gentle fingers were sliding under his hem and removing his shirt.

So he let himself be distracted, tracing the planes of Leonard's chest and shoulders with eyes and fingers, following the line of his collarbone and remembering where a touch made him shiver.

"You like the slow reveal," Leonard asked as he threw Chris's shirt out of the way, "or do we unwrap everything at once and sort it all out once we're horizontal?"

"Yes," Chris said promptly. "Slow reveal for you, fast for me."

Leonard laughed. "No; not fair."

"Who says?" He reached out and grabbed Leonard's belt, pulling to close the space between them. Proving why he'd been elevated to the rank of captain significantly younger than average, he managed to kiss Leonard even while undoing his belt and the button and fly of the pants. He pushed the fabric over McCoy's hips, letting it pool around his ankles, and left him in only his underwear.

Apparently that meant fast and furious to Leonard, because in under a minute, they'd managed to strew all remaining clothing in a trail from the door to the bed. Chris barely managed to push the covers on the bed down to the foot before he found himself lying on his side, facing Leonard.

And that was when he froze. "Hi," he said.

"Oh, no, you don't," Leonard said, and wrapped an arm around his waist, hauling him against him. Almost instantly he released him and said, "I'm sorry. I mean—"

"No, you were right," Chris said. _I can do this._ "Don't touch my wrists, don't pin me down, nothing in my mouth—everything else should be fine. That was just—"

"An uncharacteristic moment of hesitation?" Leonard suggested.

Chris shrugged, which probably looked a bit odd.

"How about this for reassurance?" Leonard said, and carefully found Chris's hand, placing it on his— _oh, **wow**_.

"That's—very reassuring," Chris said after he recovered his brainpower. He wrapped his fingers around Leonard's cock and stroked from root to tip.

Leonard gasped. "Good." His hand went over Chris's for a moment, stilling it. "Just remember, if something isn't working for you, or doesn't work for you, tell me, and we'll try something else or we'll stop. Okay?"

"Yes, yes," Chris said, but he couldn't keep himself from smiling. He couldn't even manage to drop one side of his mouth to make it ironic instead of just sweet.

Leonard smiled back, also sweet. "Good," he said. "Now, you can get back to that, if you want."

"Do you want to get off this way?" Chris asked as he started stroking again.

"Well, sure," Leonard said, and gasped as Chris ran a thumb over the head. "But not quite yet."

"Mmm. Okay." Chris nudged Leonard's shoulder until he lay mostly-flat on the bed, keeping his other hand still on Leonard's cock. He may not be able to use his mouth the way he wanted, but he could still use it—to nibble at McCoy's collarbone, to dart his tongue into the intraclavicular notch and taste the sweat that had already started to gather there.

Leonard gasped again, his hips pressing upward into Chris's hand, and skimmed a hand over Chris's back before resting lightly against his neck.

That—felt strange. Chris let go of Leonard's cock briefly to move his hand up onto his head, fingers in his hair, and then returned to his ministrations. _Ahh, better._ He looked up at McCoy's face, and the other man's eyes were closed, lips parted.

 _Fuck._ He wanted to lick every centimeter of the man, and blow him, and fuck him through the mattress—all at the same time—and he _couldn't_ , at least not right now, and that was shitty, but goddamn it, he could fucking do _something_.

He flipped over and straddled one of Leonard's thighs, his own cock—hard, _oh god_ hard, and he'd barely noticed—pressed into the hollow of his hip as Leonard's cock was pressed into his, and cupped McCoy's face with his hands. "I'm going to make this good," he said.

"Never had a moment of doubt," Leonard said.

"That makes one of us," Chris muttered under his breath, and bit the side of Leonard's neck, right where it met his shoulder. It wasn't hard enough to leave a mark, but it was definitely hard enough to make McCoy groan.

The sound, especially because he could feel it rumble through his chest, made Chris smile, and he sat up enough to run his hands in long, sweeping strokes over Leonard's shouders and arms.

Leonard was a little bigger through the shoulders than Chris was himself; his chest hair was considerably more sparse, although that wasn't saying much. Of course, he was also twenty years younger and in excellent health and physical condition, so Chris should probably quit with the mental comparisons if he wanted to salvage any self-esteem. Rather, he concentrated on the sensation of Leonard's skin under his hands, warm and faintly rough where he had body hair.

McCoy made quiet humming noises when he was pleased, apparently. He also was ticklish along his ribs, but very much liked having the hair below his navel scratched gently. His hands were ridiculously sensitive, and when Chris scraped his teeth over the center of his palm, he just about jackknifed off the bed.

"Good?" Chris asked, just to confirm.

" _God_ , yes." Leonard's voice was rough, his accent out in full force, and Chris could not _wait_ one more minute.

He rolled off, threaded his right arm under the pillow that held Leonard's head, and licked Leonard's earlobe. "Do you want me to talk, or no?" he asked, "and do you want me to grab the lube?"

"Talk, yes, if you can; lube, no, not necessary."

Chris laughed, low and dark. "I can talk." He reached down, cupped Leonard's balls in his hand, briefly rolling, and then wrapped his hand around his cock.

Leonard groaned and turned his head to press his lips against Chris's forehead briefly. "Go on," he said.

"Mmm," Chris said, and squeezed before he started stroking. "You look amazing like this, you know?" he said. "Naked, sweaty, hard, spread out in my bed."

Leonard _hmm_ ed back, his cock jumping in Chris's hand.

"Ah, you like that?" Chris said, and swiped his thumb over the head again, this time catching a drop of pre-come. "Good, because I definitely do. Like this. Like _you_." He was veering toward the inane, if not overly sentimental, so he switched gears back to the more sensual. "And I'm definitely going to like watching you come for me."

McCoy's eyes squeezed shut, and his tongue darted out to moisten his lips.

"Sometime soon," Chris said, "I'm going to like sliding inside of you, and watching you below me." He sped up his motions just a bit. "Believe me, I'll like that quite a bit. Even thinking about it—" He scraped his teeth against Leonard's neck, and caught a drop of sweat on his tongue. "Fuck."

" _God_ , yes," Leonard said again, dragging a hissing breath in through his teeth. His fingers flexed against the sheets, grabbing handfuls of the bedding.

Chris pushed himself a little more firmly against Leonard's side, slinging a leg over his, and increased his speed a little more. "You have no idea how much I want to see you at that moment, when you lose all control. How much I want to hear you, whether you make a quiet gasp or whether you scream my name—I want to know. And I want to know _soon_."

"Close," Leonard said through clenched teeth.

His body was starting to shake; Chris watched his head tip back and his lips part as he hauled in deep breaths. Chris pressed his lips to Leonard's neck briefly and then propped himself up just enough to see his face.

"Leonard," he said, putting just a little of the command tone into his voice, "I want you to come for me. _Now._ "

And Leonard did, gasping out a strangled, "Chris!" as his back arched and he came all over Chris's hand and his own chest.

Chris kept touching him, gently, until Leonard relaxed somewhat, and then wiped his hand off on the sheet.

Leonard turned his head, and kissed Chris, brief but strong. "How are you so good at that?" he asked, voice low and lazy and intensely satisfied.

Chris laughed. "I've always been good at talking people into things."

"That you are." Leonard shifted, realigning himself against Chris. "Just give me a moment here."

Chris paused for a moment, and then said, "Take all the time you need." _Fuck._

"Mmm," Leonard said. "What is it?"

Chris shifted his hips and pushed up against Leonard's hip in answer. "Not hard anymore," he said, probably unnecessarily.

"So?" Leonard asked. "It'll happen again, or it won't."

Chris frowned, and looked at Leonard. "How are you so nice?" he asked without thinking, and winced. "I mean—that didn't come out right."

Leonard laughed. "No, I understand," he said. "It's pretty simple. I figure out what the asshole response would be, since it's usually my first instinct, and then don't do that." He shrugged. "I still want to touch you. Didn't get enough of that before."

Jesus, McCoy had a way of saying things that just—"Please do," he said, throat a little tight.

"Okay," Leonard said. "How are we going to do this? I'm guessing eighty-odd kilos of me on you wouldn't be your first choice."

In another lifetime, he'd have enjoyed that, but right now . . . "You're correct." He winced. "That sounded harsher than I intended. I don't know, but we're at a point where I'd rather not risk it."

Leonard nodded. "Okay." He frowned momentarily, and said, "What if you're sitting up, against the headboard?" The bed didn't have a headboard, but before Chris could point that out, Leonard said, "Or the wall."

"That might work," Chris said.

"Do you have any spare pillows?"

"In the closet," he said, pointing, and _oh_ , if he'd known Leonard's ass looked like _that_ when walking nude he would have kicked him out of bed on a pointless errand a long time ago.

The return trip was just as nice, in a different way, muscles shifting in his legs and abdomen. "What?" Leonard asked.

"Nothing," Chris said, grinning. "You want to walk back to the closet and grab something else random?"

Leonard frowned again and looked at the closet before he caught on, and shook his head. "You want to watch my ass or you want to grab it?"

"Good point."

Together they stacked the pillows by the wall, and Chris leaned against the pile, adjusting until he was comfortable.

"That okay?" Leonard asked.

"I think so."

Leonard leaned in and kissed him, warm and unhurried. Or at least it started that way, but when Chris nibbled on his lower lip, he broke the kiss, hauled in a harsh breath, and set his mouth right below Chris's ear. A moment later Chris felt the scrape of teeth against his neck and felt his heart start to race. It was—

Jesus, he didn't know if he could—

But it was so—

He threaded his fingers through Leonard's hair and drew him off for a moment. Fuck, this was the most difficult thing he'd done all night. "I just want you to know," he said, heart still pounding, "that what you're doing right there is basically edgeplay for me. I'm not saying stop, not yet, because goddamn is it working right now—" He took Leonard's hand and put it on his cock, hard as fucking nails when it hadn't been a minute ago. "—but be careful."

"Okay," Leonard said, as if it were _totally normal_ to be told to be careful when nibbling on one's partner's neck, and resumed his ministrations. He gave Chris's cock a squeeze and let go, prompting a groan, but just laughed as he slid his hand up Chris's chest.

As he worked his way down, Chris groaned again at the feeling of Leonard's mouth on his collarbone. Leonard's fingers carded through Chris's chest hair, and scratched lightly.

"Oh, god," Chris said, and twisted, trying to get more skin against skin. Unfortunately, he twisted _just_ wrong, and something in his hip scraped against something else, setting off his already-overloaded nervous system. He stiffened, not in the good way, which made it worse, and inhaled sharply.

Leonard looked up immediately. "What's wrong?"

"Fucking—nervous system," Chris said, gritting his teeth and trying to ride out the moment. Sometimes it would go away after a few moments; sometimes it would feed back into a loop and he'd be miserable until he got more drugs in him. "Just—a moment—"

McCoy nodded and sat back on his heels.

Chris squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on relaxing as much as he possibly could. He didn't mind a little pain, but it wasn't a turn-on, and even if it were, _this_ kind of pain wasn't the kind he'd want. He inhaled, held the breath, and exhaled slowly.

After what felt like forever but what was probably only two or three minutes, the pain ebbed back to what he called 'zero' but what was actually probably a three or four by his pre-bug standards. "Okay," he said.

"Okay?" Leonard said, but didn't move.

"Okay, the acute pain is gone, but can we wait a few minutes?" He didn't know if a few minutes would be long enough, but he didn't want to pull the plug. Not yet.

"Of course," Leonard said. "Can I —" He gestured vaguely at the pillows next to Chris, who nodded. Brushing light fingers over Chris's shoulder, Leonard curled up next to him, head above his shoulder on the pillows, carefully not touching him.

Moving carefully, Chris threaded his arm under Leonard's neck, and pulled him in until they were touching in a long line from neck to knee. He closed his eyes briefly and listened to the muted hum of the computers and fans in the room.

Within a few minutes, though, the background hum receded in his mind, and instead, he heard Leonard's breath, felt it gently against his collarbone. He could feel the faint rasp of hair against skin as McCoy's chest rose and fell slightly. When he realized, with a moment of surprise, that heat unrelated to the warmth of the room was starting to build at every point of their contact, he smiled and stroked Leonard's shoulder. "All right," he said. "So where were we?"

"You sure?" Leonard said, and winced. "Sorry. Strike that."

"So stricken." He was pretty relaxed; enough that McCoy's misstep made him smile instead of freeze.

Leonard coughed. "So, uh, I think I was somewhere around here?" He scratched gently just below Chris's collarbone while leaning over to kiss right below his ear, and Chris groaned.

"Yeah, there," he managed to say.

Leonard distracted him with fingers and lips and tongue, surprisingly deft, and Chris gasped and moaned and lost all track of time until McCoy raised his head. His mouth was so close to Chris's cock that he could feel the hot breath, and Chris almost begged him not to stop.

Leonard spoke before he could, though. "Is this okay?"

"Yes, yes, god, _please_ ," he said, and it said something that he was so far gone that he didn't _care_ that he sounded desperate.

And _ohhh_ —Leonard's mouth was hot and wet and he sucked in _exactly_ the right way, just at the tip with his tongue under the head and his hand around the base and oh _god_ this wasn't going to last long—nice picture of his supposed stamina he was going to give—

He rode just on the fine edge before orgasm for longer than he thought physically possible, but finally tipped over when Leonard made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. He whited out, warp trails behind his eyes.

When he came back, Leonard was looking at him, one hand still cupped around him. "Good?" he asked.

Chris smiled lazily. "Oh, yes."

Leonard returned the smile. "You—tensed. I thought maybe—"

Chris took stock, as quickly as he could with his mind still mostly blown, and said, "No, I'm fine. My left hip is twinging a bit but that will go away in a few moments."

"Hip?"

"Well, all right," he said, "it's actually my ass more than anything—sciatic nerve—but 'hip' is the polite version."

"Can I help?"

Chris debated for a long moment, and finally said, "Yeah. Help me turn over?"

He told McCoy where exactly to press to give him some relief, and once the twinging stopped, he sighed and relaxed into the mattress.

Leonard, propped up on one elbow, trailed the fingers of his other hand up and down Chris's spine, slipping easily in the sweat. Chris watched him fondly, eyes half-mast with drowsiness and post-orgasm languor, but not willing to fall asleep yet. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

Leonard half-shrugged. "Nothing interesting."

"I won't offer a penny, then."

He smiled. "Just marveling at modern medicine."

Chris raised both eyebrows. "Oh?"

"It just seems," Leonard said, "that with what you've been through, there should be more—evidence, I guess." He shrugged with one shoulder.

Chris knew there were a thousand ways he could take that as an insult, and a few dozen of them started to rise in his chest, but rather than let any of that happen, he reached for Leonard's hand and put it on the back of his neck. "Just inside my hairline, there's a scar. I can't find it, but Phil reassures me that it's there."

Leonard's fingertips found it easily, tracing a definite line from just behind his left ear to a couple centimeters behind his right. "What's it from?" he asked.

"Getting cracked over the head with a rock and then thrown in a prison for three days," Chris said. "I think that was my fifth concussion."

"Fifth?"

"It's only one of two that had to heal without a regen," Chris said. "Don't worry. I'm not anywhere near brain damage yet."

"Other than whatever possesses you captain-types in general," Leonard said.

Chris couldn't quite see his face, but he could hear the eyeroll. "And yet you're voluntarily in bed with me. I wonder what that says about you."

"Never said _I_ wasn't brain-damaged," Leonard said, but his tone was soft and he was threading his fingers through Chris's hair, so it failed as an insult.

Chris just smiled and closed his eyes.

"Are you going to be able to sleep with me here?" Leonard asked, a couple minutes later.

"I don't know," Chris said, forcing his eyes open and pushing back the waves of sleep. "It doesn't seem like a problem now, but who knows?"

"Want me to leave, then?"

"Hell, no," Chris said, and rolled on his side to face him, not without effort but fortunately without pain. He pulled Leonard against him and slid a leg between the other man's. "If I hurt you, I'm sorry."

"Doubt you will," Leonard said, but settled in and pulled the sheet over them.

Chris closed his eyes, smiling again.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, Chris woke up, tangled in the sheets. His heart started beating double-time, and he broke out into a cold sweat, as he struggled to get the sheets off his legs. His breaths grew shallower and faster, until he heard, "Shh, let me help," and felt Leonard pull the sheet away from him.

"Thanks," he said, sounding half-strangled.

"Need anything else?" Leonard asked, and he was still definitely Leonard, not Dr. McCoy. He handed Chris the hem of the detangled bedsheet.

Chris shook his head, and then realizing that Leonard probably couldn't see it in the dark, said, "No, I'm fine."

"Okay," Leonard said, and lay back down, facing the wall away from Chris.

It clearly wasn't a rejection so much as an invitation, and after a moment, Chris rolled over to his side and wrapped himself around Leonard's broad, warm back, pulling the sheet over both of them. It took a while for his heartbeat to slow down to normal and the shaking to stop, but eventually, listening to Leonard's slow, even breathing, he managed to fall back asleep until morning.

—fin—

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks due to my artist and mixer, ellipsisthgreat and da_angel792, who were both extraordinarily easy to work with and very talented, and again to boosette, for giving me the original prompt (for what was supposed to be a drabble).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Where You're Meant to Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/286529) by [circ_bamboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo)
  * [Time On My Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/317836) by [circ_bamboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo)




End file.
